Word: deng
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Added to that was the sudden re-emergence early in the week of a quartet of octogenarian revolutionaries, among them economist Chen Yun and former President Li Xiannian. This seemed to indicate that Deng was seeking support against Zhao from the very men he had once sidelined for resisting his economic reforms. Analysts in Beijing feared that Deng had cast his lot with this ideologically rigid Gang of Elders, as the group was dubbed. Such fears were buttressed by renewed government denunciations of "bourgeois liberalization," the phrase that presaged a conservative crackdown two years ago. Some Chinese found a good...
Apparently Deng's strategy prevailed. Throughout the week, party documents circulated detailing the events that contributed to Zhao's unofficial removal. As recounted by President Yang Shangkun in these papers, Zhao's offenses included failing to support a harsh editorial in the People's Daily that condemned the demonstrators and refusing to join other Politburo members in backing martial...
...rumor-heavy press in Hong Kong suggested an altogether different scheme. Newspapers claimed that the ultimate target of the Gang of Elders was not Zhao but Deng; the elders, it was said, intended to force Deng out of his role and replace him with the more conservative and orthodox President Yang. Beijing analysts discounted the theory as overly sensational. In fact, Deng is the most hard-line enemy of the students. Only the party turmoil may have delayed him from lining up support for his position. The massive sweep through Tiananmen could not have been facilitated without the cooperation...
Many suspect that Yang is the true champion of the military push into Tiananmen. While Deng heads the shadowy but omnipotent Central Military Commission, the President has placed relatives in key positions in the military hierarchy; one of the units involved in the Tiananmen massacre was under the personal command of his brother Yang Baibing. If Deng, through loss of face or life, ceased to rule China, Yang Shangkun might attempt to maneuver himself into the leadership of the Central Military Commission and replace Deng as China's most eminent leader...
...bloody assault by Deng's armed troops ended all that, and also the Goddess of Democracy, which was crushed by a tank once the troops gained control of the square. Even so, the events of the past seven weeks immunized vast numbers of people against the traditional propaganda bromides and convinced them that the government was not invulnerable: it was only an agency of brutal power. If the student campaign failed, it at least succeeded in forging a historic new link between China's intellectual community and its masses. As an observer said earlier in the week, "It will...