Remembering Zhang Junsheng: Beijing’s envoy who took aim at Chris Patten
Zhang Junsheng, who died aged 82, was a crucial figure during the handover and did not shy away from attacking the city’s final governor
Zhang Junsheng, a former senior mainland envoy based in Hong Kong and vocal critic of the city’s colonial government, has died. He was 82.
The cause of death was not made public, but some media reports said he had a heart problem.
While Zhang made headlines for crossing swords with the last governor Chris Patten and slamming pro-democracy advocates, some pan-democrats remembered him for his sympathetic stance towards protesting students during the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
According to Chinese media, Zhang reportedly approved the decision by the Beijing mouthpiece Wen Wei Po to run an editorial about the protests consisting of only four Chinese characters – “deep grief” and “bitter hatred”.
But he survived a subsequent purge of the ranks of anyone sympathetic to the students and remained in Hong Kong until his retirement in 1998.
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Zhang was born in Changting in Fujian province in 1936 and joined the Chinese Communist Party at the age of 20. By 1983, he had risen to the rank of deputy party secretary of Hangzhou in neighbouring Zhejiang province and two years later moved to the Hong Kong branch of the New China News Agency, or Xinhua, where he eventually became deputy director.