Almost 500 previously unpublished documents about Zhao Ziyang, the bold reformer who served as China’s premier (1980-1987) and Communist Party general secretary (1987-1989), were smuggled out of China and published in late July by the Chinese University Press in Hong Kong. The documents show how Zhao led a decade of transformational economic reform and sketched out plans for political reform. Zhao was purged in 1989 and died under house arrest in 2005. The documents have sparked a renewed interest in his time in power and offer an opportunity to imagine what might have been had the man and his ideas survived.
It is difficult to say with any certainty how China would have evolved had Zhao Ziyang not been overthrown in 1989. The ostensible cause of his purge was his refusal to endorse martial law and authorize the use of force to suppress the Tiananmen demonstrations (thus “splitting the Party”)—but even before that fateful Politburo meeting and his final public appearance in the square during the early morning hours of May 19, 1989, Zhao was locked in intense factional struggle with Li Peng, Yang Shangkun, and arch-conservative elders Wang Zhen and Deng Liqun.
Tom Brokaw, one of the most trusted and respected figures in broadcast journalism, is a special correspondent for NBC News. In this role, he reports and produces long-form documentaries and provides expertise during election coverage and breaking news events for NBC News.
On December 1, 2004, Brokaw stepped down after 21 years as the anchor and Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News. He has received numerous honors, including the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award and the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and he was inducted as a fellow into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition, Brokaw has received the Records of Achievement Award from The Foundation for the National Archives; the Association of the U.S. Army honored him with their highest award, the George Catlett Marshall Medal, the first ever to a journalist; and the West Point Sylvanus Thayer Award, in recognition of devoted service to bringing exclusive interviews and stories to public attention. His insight, ability, and integrity have earned him a dozen Emmys and two Peabody and duPont awards for his journalistic achievements. In 2003, NBC Nightly News was honored with the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast, representing the program’s fourth consecutive win in this category.
Most recently, Brokaw served as interim moderator of NBC’s top-rated Sunday morning public affairs program, Meet the Press, from June 2008 until December 2008, after the untimely death of Tim Russert.
Student leaders from Beijing University gather at the headquarters of the All-China Students’ Federation, an official Chinese student association, to ask the government to speed up democratization, April 29, 1989. Chinese troops crushed the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square on June 3-4.
People demonstrate in memory of the late Premier Zhou Enlai during the Qingming Festival, a traditional time for honoring the dead, April 5, 1976. This event, known as the ‘Tiananmen Incident,’ led to hundreds of arrests. The Party’s Central Committee, at a tense meeting, condemned the episode as counter-revolutionary.
People read posters hanging on the famous ‘Democracy Wall’ on Chang’an Avenue in Beijing that called into question items of the Central Committee agenda at the time, December 5, 1978.
Chen Duxiu (1879-1942).
Li Dazhao (1888-1927).
The pudgy cheeks and flaring hairdo of North Korea’s young ruler Kim Jong-un, his bromance with tattooed and pierced former basketball star Dennis Rodman, his boy-on-a-lark grin at missile firings, combine incongruously with the regime’s pledge to drown its enemies in a “sea of fire.” They elicit a mix of revulsion and ridicule in the West. Many predict that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) cannot survive much longer, given its pervasive poverty, genocidal prison camp system identified by a U.N.
