AS ZHAO KEQIANG lay in a hospital bed dying of lung cancer, he held his hands in prayer and said: 'What crime did I commit? When I die, my eyes will not close until I receive justice for the enterprise to which I devoted my life.' When he died, in July last year aged 72, his eyes were open. It was left to his daughter, Zhao Xiaohe, 41, to close them.
Zhao's tragedy was losing the medicine factory in the northeast mainland city of Harbin that he established in 1973, after the workers apparently drove him out and the city Government refused to hand it back to him. His two children continue their fight to clear his name but are losing heart at what they claim is the corruption of the Government and its legal system.
The plant the workers took over has stopped production after losing the management and technical expertise he provided.
Zhao's life is one of misfortune and betrayal. He was imprisoned for more than seven years for crimes he did not commit and was twice stripped of his assets without explanation. His experience explains why many companies, foreign and domestic, do not dare to invest their money in Heilongjiang, China's most northern province, and one of the few remaining orthodox communist regions of the country.
However, Harbin authorities strongly dispute his family's version of the facts, insisting the factory that was taken away from Zhao was never his in the first place.
Zhao was born on October 11, 1926, in Liaoning, the son of an official in the Nationalist Government. Zhao studied biology at the Northeast Agriculture University and went to work at the hygiene bureau of Harbin in the early 1950s. His first spell in prison came after he diagnosed a piece of mutton from a local factory as being infected with sheep pox and unfit to eat. Enraged at the losses this would lead to, the factory sought the help of the police, who arrested him. He was detained for three years until colleagues were able to convince officials in Beijing to intervene and obtain his release.
