Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang
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| Author | Zhao Ziyang |
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| Original title | 改革歷程 |
| Translator | Bao Pu |
| Country | United States and United Kingdom |
| Language | Chinese, English |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
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Publication date
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May 19, 2009 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 336 pp (first edition, paperback) |
| ISBN | (first edition for US, hardback); (first edition for UK, hardback) |
| OCLC | 301887109 |
| 951.058092 22 | |
| LC Class | DS779.29.Z467 A313 2009 |
Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang are the memoirs of the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Zhao Ziyang, who was sacked after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. The book was published in English in May 2009, to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the clearing of the square by tanks on June 4, 1989. It is based on a series of about thirty audio tapes recorded secretly by Zhao while he was under house arrest in 1999 and 2000.
Co-editor Adi Ignatius pinpoints a meeting held at Deng Xiaoping's home on May 17, 1989, less than three weeks before the Tiananmen protests, as the key moment in the book. When Zhao argued that the government should look for ways to ease tensions with the protesters, two conservative officials immediately criticized him. Deng then announced he would impose martial law. Zhao commented: "I refused to become the General Secretary who mobilized the military to crack down on students." In the last chapter, Zhao praises the Western system of parliamentary democracy and says that it is the only way China can solve its problems of corruption and a growing gap between the rich and poor.
Prior to publication, a number of newspapers and journals have published key extracts of Zhao's reflections on a range of topics:
Following the 1989 Tiananmen protests, Zhao was relieved of all positions in government and placed under house arrest. For the next sixteen years of his life, Zhao lived in forced seclusion in a quiet Beijing alley. Although minor details of his life leaked out, China scholars lamented that Zhao's account of events was to remain unknown. Zhao's production of the memoir, in complete secrecy, is the only surviving public record of the opinions and perspectives Zhao held later in his life.
Zhao began secretly recording his autobiography on children's cassette tapes in 1999, and eventually completed approximately thirty tapes, each about six minutes in length. Zhao produced his audio journals by recording over inconspicuous low-quality tapes which were readily available in his home: children's music and Peking Opera. Zhao indicated the tapes' intended order by faint pencil markings, and no titles or notes on how Zhao intended the tapes to be otherwise interpreted or presented were ever recovered. The voices of several of Zhao's closest friends were heard in several of the later tapes, but were edited out of the published book in order to protect their identities. After the tapes' creation, Zhao smuggled them out of his residence by passing them to these friends. In order to minimize the risk that some tapes might be lost or confiscated, each participant was only entrusted with a small part of the total work.
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