In the days leading up to the opening of the 20th congress, several old articles and videos commemorating former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Zhao Ziyang were circulated on Chinese social media.
The timing, ahead of the CCP’s most vital conference, “could be a sign of civil dissatisfaction with the authorities in Chinese society and within the CCP,” said New Zealand-based Chen Weijian, editor-in-chief of Beijing Spring, a monthly magazine focused on the Chinese democracy movement, headquartered in New York.
In 1989, Zhao, then general secretary of the party, was stripped of his post for opposing the military’s massacre of a student democracy movement that occurred at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Zhao later earned a good reputation among the Chinese people for taking such a strong stand….