Word: hu
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Partisans of greater democracy in China, however, had little cause for optimism. Purges of intellectuals continued. An ideological campaign gathered force to rescind many of the political and economic freedoms permitted recently by Hu Yaobang, the Communist Party's General Secretary, removed from his post two weeks ago and replaced by Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang. With Fang Lizhi and Author Wang Ruowang already tossed out of the party for advocating "bourgeois liberalism," the purge turned last week to the president and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who were removed from office. They had been responsible...
...shake-up left some major questions unanswered. Who would succeed Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping, 82, who had named Hu to the top party post seven years ago and had supposedly groomed him as his political heir? What would become of Deng's sweeping economic reforms, aimed at modernizing agriculture and industry through the use of Western-style technology and limited free-market mechanisms? On the questions of economic and foreign policy, China's two top leaders sought to give assurances that no drastic shifts were in the works. Zhao told a visiting Hungarian official last week that the "personnel changes...
Even before Hu's ouster, the crackdown on dissent was under way. Early last week three prominent intellectuals were singled out for "bourgeois tendencies." On Monday it was announced on television that Astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, charged with defaming party leaders and slandering socialism, had been dismissed from his post as vice president at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, where the student protests began in early December. Fang's boss Guan Weiyan was charged with failing to keep Fang in line and was similarly dumped from his job. Writer Wang Ruowang, scolded for maintaining liberal ideas, was expelled...
Still, the atmosphere in Peking last week was redolent of more repressive days. Hu's public demotion was certainly not as cruel as the brutal treatment he received during the Cultural Revolution, when his head was shaved and he was forced to crawl on his hands and knees. But the painful return to forced self-criticism did not seem far off when Hu owned up last week to "mistakes on major issues of political principles." China's newspapers also ran self- criticism, bizarrely apologizing for stories written last fall. No less chilling was the group of scientists who appeared...
...Deng selected to replace Hu as Communist Party chief is unlikely to press for greater political freedom. Zhao, 67, who will hold the title of acting General Secretary until the Central Committee confirms his appointment, is an agricultural expert who heartily embraces Deng's economic reforms. As No. 3 in the hierarchy, he has been regarded as less liberal than Hu on political matters, and considerably less outspoken. After a month of unruly students, that seems to be just what Deng wants...