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SCMP Reporter

ON MAINLAND POLITICAL/ ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

'We must not allow the policies of reform, open door and rendering [the economy] alive to be hindered by the campaign against bourgeois liberalisation'

Central Document No 4 circulated on January 28, 1987, during Zhao's early days as party secretary

'It was wrong to consider as capitalistic things already proven to be beneficial to the liberalisation of production force'

May 13, 1987, in Zhongnanhai, later circulated in Central Document No 16

'Permission is given for further explorations [of the nature of Chinese socialism] ... However, it is forbidden to remain fossilised [in thought]'

In an address on May 11, 1987

'Why has the Propaganda Department been engaged in other matters while its primary goal of propagating reform has not been achieved?'

Reported question in June 1987

'Instead of treating Marxist canon as 'dogma' that binds our hands and feet, [we must] assiduously develop the scientific spirit and creative vigour of Marxism'

At the opening of the 13th Party Congress, October 25, 1987

'As a first major step, let us take the coastal area from Liaoning province  in the northeast and Hainan  in the southwest - and the 200 million to 300 million people who inhabit the belt - out of the existing system. Let the coastal economy integrate and march in lockstep with the international economy'

Reported comment in November 1987, at the closing of the 13th Party Congress, on what was later on known as the 'coastal strategy'

ON THE PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT OF 1989

'For the most important questions, [the Communist Party] still needs comrade Deng Xiaoping  to be at the helm'

Remarks to visiting Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev on May 16, 1989

'We have come too late. I am sorry, students. No matter how you have criticised us, I think you have been right to do so. We demonstrated and lay across railroad tracks when we were young, too, and took no thought for the future. But I have to ask you to think carefully about the future. Many issues will be resolved eventually. I beg you to end the hunger strike'

Address to students in Tiananmen Square in the early morning of May 19, 1989

ON HONG KONG

'I don't think that Hong Kong [people] need to be worried about the future. Why do you have to worry?'

September 23, 1982, speaking to journalists at the Great Hall of the People before meeting visiting British prime minister Margaret Thatcher



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South China Sea

In his words