Major coup on Tiananmen Square memoirs that will rock China’s communist party

For some seven hours, Reuters was the only agency with news of the publication of the secret memoirs of Zhao Ziyang, who was toppled as Communist Party chief in 1989 for opposing the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square crackdown and died in 2005 after spending more than 15 years under house arrest. In a comprehensive multimedia package released on May 14, Reuters had the news, sidebars to put it in perspective, video, and previously unpublished pictures of Zhao`s funeral. In his memoirs, Zhao praises Western-style democracy and describes the killings of hundreds of students, a taboo subject for China’s modern-day leaders, as a tragedy. He denies that there was a student-led plot, contradicting the Party line that the protests were counter-revolutionary. The story comes just before the sensitive 20th anniversary of the killings and is likely to be viewed with serious concern for the stability-obsessed Communist Party. The memoirs are on sale in Hong Kong and are likely to reach the mainland, defying official censors. Reuters obtained the manuscript from a source other than the publisher. A string of major newspapers around the world published the Reuters stories as rival news agencies played catch-up, and our correspondents received congratulatory emails and phone calls from China-watching academics, Beijing-based diplomats and other foreign reporters.