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The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang
Simon & Schuster
May 2009
On Sale: May 19, 2009
336 pages
ISBN: 1439149380
EAN: 9781439149386
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
How often can you peek behind the curtains of one of the
most secretive governments in the world? Prisoner of the
State is the first book to give readers a front row seat to
the secret inner workings of China’s government. It is the
story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal
change to that nation and who, at the height of the
Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, tried to stop the
massacre and was dethroned for his efforts. When China’s army moved in, killing hundreds of students
and other demonstrators, Zhao was placed under house arrest
at his home on a quiet alley in Beijing. China’s most
promising change agent had been disgraced, along with the
policies he stood for. The premier spent the last sixteen
years of his life, up until his death in 2005, in
seclusion. An occasional detail about his life would slip
out: reports of a golf excursion, a photo of his aging
visage, a leaked letter to China’s leaders. But China
scholars often lamented that Zhao never had his final say. As it turns out, Zhao did produce a memoir in complete
secrecy. He methodically recorded his thoughts and
recollections on what had happened behind the scenes during
many of modern China’s most critical moments. The tapes he
produced were smuggled out of the country and form the
basis for Prisoner of the State. In this audio journal,
Zhao provides intimate details about the Tiananmen
crackdown; he describes the ploys and double crosses
China's top leaders use to gain advantage over one another;
and he talks of the necessity for China to adopt democracy
in order to achieve long-term stability. The China that Zhao portrays is not some long-lost dynasty.
It is today’s China, where the nation’s leaders accept
economic freedom but continue to resist political change. If Zhao had survived—that is, if the hard-line hadn’t
prevailed during Tiananmen—he might have been able to steer
China’s political system toward more openness and tolerance. Zhao’s call to begin lifting the Party's control over
China's life—to let a little freedom into the public square—
is remarkable coming from a man who had once dominated that
square. Although Zhao now speaks from the grave in this
moving and riveting memoir, his voice has the moral power
to make China sit up and listen.
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