Word: hu
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...Premier left quickly, but Zhao stayed on. A proponent of rapid economic reform, Zhao was well aware that his predecessor, Hu Yaobang, supported political reform and was sacked for not moving quickly enough to crush student demonstrations more than two years ago. (Hu's death on April 15 sparked the first demonstrations of the past tumultuous month.) But in Tiananmen, Zhao did not go out of his way to avoid Hu's mistake. His eyes welling with tears, he acknowledged the patriotism of the students. "I came too late, too late," a student quoted him as saying. "I should...
...miles from the university belt in northwestern Beijing to Tiananmen Square in the city's center. It was the latest and by far the largest in a series of protests that began when students gathered on April 16 to mourn the death of former Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, whose tolerance of demonstrations two years ago precipitated his downfall. The marchers, divided into well-organized ranks according to their school, chanted and waved red and white banners. When they tired of singing the Internationale and the national anthem, the students launched into homemade ditties. To the tune...
...permitted it to get started. One possibility is that with Mikhail Gorbachev due in Beijing on May 15, China's rulers were loath to set the stage with a crackdown. Some cynics speculated that conservatives plan to use the spasm of protest to claim a new liberal victim, possibly Hu's successor, Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. But a Western diplomat in Beijing disagreed, suggesting that the era of fall-guy politics has ended. Said he: "Can they let another guy go down the tubes, given the growing cynicism of the Chinese people, the concern for human rights outside...
...time of Premier Zhou's death, the people liked him, but they thought of him as a good dictator. The people were still Marxists then." By contrast, continues Fang, who welcomes the transition, the people no longer speak of Marxism, and when | they venerate a man like Hu Yaobang, they are paying homage to him not as a benign dictator but as a symbol of reform...
...surely aware that his political power, especially among the young, is on the wane. He can afford to allow university students to let off steam occasionally in pursuit of democracy or in memory of a fallen hero. The test will come if, when the ceremonies for Hu are past, the engine of protest should suddenly roar out of control...