Keep Up Pressure on China, Says Former Top Aide on Anniversary

By Radio Free Asia
04 June 2007

HONG KONG—A former top aide in China's ruling Communist Party has called on the Chinese people to keep up pressure on their government, which he described as "utterly corrupt."

"The pressure exerted by the Chinese people is indeed a good thing; its vice-like grip gives us the best available tool with which to reform an authoritarian, one-party state," wrote Bao Tong, former aide to ousted late premier Zhao Ziyang in an essay broadcast on RFA's Mandarin service Friday.

In a memorial essay written for the 18th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, Bao also hit out at those who "sold their souls" by pretending that the crackdown was good for China's economy.

'Butcher' Deng Xiaoping

"There are always those who are prepared to sell their own souls, who in the past 18 years have praised the massacre perpetrated by that butcher as providing a firm basis for prosperity, because he broke the will of the people with his iron fist," Bao wrote. "That butcher" refers to the late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, who is credited with launching China's economic boom.

"This chairman gave the order to the People's Liberation Army to shoulder their assault weapons and drive tanks in a move that crushed and strafed the masters of the country," Bao said.

"The numbers of injured went beyond the capacity of emergency rooms in the capital to handle. The dead were piled up in the morgues."

"The rest of the world witnessed the bloodbath in China's capital via satellite television. This sort of event, whether it occurred in the slave society or during the time of the warlords, is the sort of crime which has the power to extinguish the human spirit," he wrote.

>> Read the complete article