Zhao Ziyang - Memoirs

Memoirs

On 14 May 2009, a published edition of Zhao's memoirs was released to the public, under the English title Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. The 306-page book was crafted over four years from tapes recorded in secret by Zhao, who lived under tightly monitored house arrest for 15 years before dying in 2005. In the last chapter, Zhao praises the Western system of parliamentary democracy and says it is the only way China can solve its problems of corruption and a growing gap between the rich and poor.

Zhao's published autobiography is based on approximately thirty cassette tapes which Zhao secretly recorded between 1999 and 2000. The material in his biography was largely consistent with the information from the "Tiananmen Papers", an unauthorized collection of Chinese government documents published in 2001. The book was also consistent with material from "Captive Conversations", a record of conversations between Zhao and his friend Zong Fengming, which was published only in Chinese.

Prisoner of the State contained minor historical errors, which commenters noted may reflect how out of touch China's leaders are with Chinese society. Although the Beijing populace did spontaneously attempt to block Chinese troops' entrance into Beijing, Zhao's assertion that "groups of old ladies and children slept in the roads" was not correct. Zhao noted that the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi (the Chinese government's most wanted dissident following the Tiananmen Protests) was out of the country in 1989 and publicly critical of Deng Xiaoping, when in fact Fang was living just outside of Beijing and deliberately kept silent about politics during the 1989 protests.

As of 2009 his memoir was being sold (in both Chinese and English) in Hong Kong but not in mainland China, though a Microsoft Word file containing the memoir's entire Chinese-language text became available on the Internet and was downloaded widely throughout mainland China.

The recordings highlighted Zhao's heavy Henan accent, making his Mandarin at times hard to follow.