CHINA: Zhao Ziyang, the former Chinese prime minister put under house arrest for his soft line on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, has died aged 85. The former Communist Party general secretary had been heavily guarded at his courtyard home near Beijing's Forbidden City since 1989.
There has been speculation that his death yesterday could be a trigger for political instability. The Chinese leadership fears his passing could provide a rallying point for the disaffected rural poor, students and workers seeking economic and political reforms.
However, strong and reasonably broad-based economic growth in recent years, combined with public efforts by the Communist Party to stamp out corruption, mean Mr Zhao's death is unlikely to trigger significant unrest. A lot has changed in China since 1989.
Tiananmen Square, site of the 1989 crackdown, was sunny, cold and quiet yesterday, peopled with the usual group of tourists, Beijingers and security guards. Most noticeable were the Irish tricolours to mark the Taoiseach's visit, which begins officially today.
Wang Dan, one of the student leaders in the 1989 demonstrations, now living in exile in the United States, hailed Mr Zhao as a champion of democracy and architect of reform. "His support of the students in 1989 greatly encouraged us. And in his later years, he repeatedly expressed his wish for China to go in a democratic direction," said Mr Wang.
He described the decision to keep him under house arrest as cruel.
There were many messages of support for Mr Zhao on university chat sites, but among university students of this generation there was little major interest in the story beyond praise for Mr Zhao's reformist position.
Tian Bing, a 20-year-old philosophy student at Tsinghua University, said she didn't know much about Mr Zhao.
"But reform is certainly a good thing. Without reform we wouldn't have today's good life," said Ms Tian. "I won't go to the Tiananmen Square and I think neither will my classmates. The reason is that he (Zhao) belongs to the past."
Gao Shanshan, a senior student in the English department, said she knew little about Mr Zhao. "I don't think the students will go to the Square, because today's students are more mature. We won't be ignited or stimulated by, I don't know, by some hot words," said Ms Gao.
Guo Pan, a graduate student (27), was more interested in Mr Zhao's death. "But even so I don't know much about him. Comparatively speaking, I know more than the other students in this campus. I was born in the 1970s and when June 4th happened I was a primary school student.
"For the generation born in the 1980s, as most of today's university students were, what do you suppose they know about Zhao?
"The enthusiastic generation is gone. The current generation cares little about politics. I'm not blaming them or saying they are cold-hearted, but now the society is full of change and it's hard to concentrate on just one thing," said Mr Guo.
The official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, issued a brief statement announcing the death of "Comrade Zhao" while his daughter, Ms Wang Yannan, sent a short text message to friends by mobile phone. "He left peacefully this morning, he is free at last," ran the message.
Mr Zhao had been seriously ill in a Beijing hospital for some time with a lung problem and he fell into a coma on Friday after suffering a series of strokes.
Although he has long been out of the public eye, analysts say that the leadership is nervous about his residual influence over 15 years after the massacre. Hundreds of people, possibly thousands, were killed when the Chinese army moved in to clear the square on June 4th, 1989.
Mr Zhao, a tall, handsome figure, embodied for many Chinese people the principles of reform and change begun by Mr Deng Xiaoping, and he was always seen as his anointed successor.
Mr Zhao was credited as the leader who oversaw 10 years of economic reform, beginning in the late 1970s, which transformed China from a flagging, isolated Communist state into one of Asia's economic engines.
His last public appearance was on May 19th, 1989, when he and current premier Wen Jiabao visited student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, in front of the Forbidden City. Mr Zhao urged them to leave the square and said that the police would use force if they did not. He then bid them a tearful farewell, saying: "I have come too late."
The Communist Party declared martial law the following day and Mr Zhao was ousted, accused of "splittism" - threatening the unity of the party, the most heinous political charge. He was replaced by Jiang Zemin, the former mayor of Shanghai, who recently resigned his position as head of the army.
The army rolled in with tanks to clear the protesters on the night of June 3rd.
The death of a disgraced former leader has often been a catalyst for dissent in Chinese political culture.
The death in April 1989 of Hu Yaobang, the reformist party chief, ignited the Tiananmen demonstrations. In 1976, the death of Zhou Enlai, then prime minister, led to an outpouring of grief and protest in Tiananmen Square that brought about the collapse of the "Gang of Four".
For the past 15 years, Mr Zhao had been held in a heavily guarded compound not far from Wangfujing, Beijing's main shopping street. He had become a "non-person" who was not allowed to receive visitors or use the telephone.