Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyan (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyan
This book is based on about thirty audiotapes of statements made by Zhao Ziyan when he was under house arrest-a "prisoner of the state"-from 1989 until his death in 2005. Zhao was premier of the People's Republic of China from 1980-87 and general secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1987-89. He openly sympathized with student demonstrators during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, losing favor as a consequence with paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. This book discloses serious power struggles among the highest leadership of the Communist Party around issues of market economics and the separation of the party from the state. Actually, when Zhao was premier, he was mostly out of touch with problems relating to reform of the political system. But Zhao's statements, as recorded in this book, show that eventually he concluded that the party should release its monopoly on power. Now as then, China needs a parliamentary democracy, a free press, freedom to organize, and an independent judiciary.
Fang Lizhi, former vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China, was named "most wanted counterrevolutionary criminal" by the Chinese authorities in 1989. Following a year's refuge in the U.S. embassy, he was permitted to emigrate and has since held positions at Cambridge University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and, currently, the University of Arizona, where he is professor of physics and astronomy. Recipient of the Nicholson Medal of the American Physical Society, the Freedom Award of the International Rescue Committee, and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, he is the author of more than 230 scientific papers and author, coauthor, or editor of twenty books, including Bringing Down the Great Wall: Writings on Science, Culture, and Democracy in China.
