Zhao Ziyang alleges Li Peng 1989 scheming

A controversial editorial by the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, that shaped the outcome of the 1989 student democratic movement was prepared by then premier Li Peng without the consent of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping .

This is revealed by the late Zhao Ziyang , then party general secretary, in his memoirs, Prisoner of the State, released yesterday.

Two decades after his downfall and four years after his death, the reformist party leader has shattered the official silence cloaking the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in explosive memoirs he recorded in secret while under house arrest.

According to Zhao, the decision to use the military against peaceful protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square could have been avoided but for the scheming of die-hard conservatives such as Mr Li, Beijing mayor Chen Xitong and vice- premier Yao Yilin , and Deng's paranoia about losing power.

The memoirs, based on about 30 hours of tape, were given to three confidants and smuggled out of China, and transcribed and compiled by trusted friends. The book, published in English by US publisher Simon & Schuster, went on sale in Hong Kong yesterday. The Chinese version will be available later this month.

In the book, Zhao says 'the scale of the demonstrations, the mess it turned into and why it happened when it did were all the results of the April 26 [People's Daily] editorial'.

That editorial, in which the peaceful student protests against official corruption that began in April 1989 were labelled 'anti-party, anti- socialist turmoil', stirred the protesters' emotions and made peaceful solutions increasingly impossible.