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The ouster of Zhao, who was rumored to be under house arrest, was the most telling proof of a rift in the leadership between conservatives and reformers. According to some sources, Zhao offered to resign when his proposals to + accommodate the students were rejected by the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest policymaking body of the Communist Party. Others in Beijing claim that the party chief's fall, which could well presage a purge of other liberal reformers, came partly because of remarks he made during a remarkable predawn visit with Li to the hunger strikers on Friday.
The Premier left quickly, but Zhao stayed on. A proponent of rapid economic reform, Zhao was well aware that his predecessor, Hu Yaobang, supported political reform and was sacked for not moving quickly enough to crush student demonstrations more than two years ago. (Hu's death on April 15 sparked the first demonstrations of the past tumultuous month.) But in Tiananmen, Zhao did not go out of his way to avoid Hu's mistake. His eyes welling with tears, he acknowledged the patriotism of the students. "I came too late, too late," a student quoted him as saying. "I should be criticized by you."
If Zhao's remarks to the students finally precipitated his fall, they were apparently not the only reason. In his talk with Gorbachev, telecast live to millions of Chinese on Tuesday, Zhao told of a secret party agreement specifying that Deng, though semiretired, was responsible for major party decisions. The document, crafted in 1987, was a compromise that paved the way for the retirement of a clutch of old party conservatives. That disclosure got Zhao in trouble less because it was made to the representative of an old enemy nation than because it signaled to the viewing audience that resentment of the government's treatment of the hunger strikers should be directed at Deng. Zhao's effort to distance himself from the government and Deng was, the Politburo apparently judged, inexcusable.
Zhao's dismissal removed an obstacle to the coming crackdown but did little to help the government restore order. If anything, it probably widened the chasm between state and society. Though Zhao was originally a protege of Deng's, his popularity rose because the public knew he opposed suppressing the demonstration. His eviction from power further alienated those already hostile to the Communist Party. It also narrowed the party's options for restoring order, making force seem virtually the sole choice.
The riotous bloom of people power, Chinese-style, that took hold of Beijing last week began as a movement almost exclusively of students. But in one of those extraordinarily rare and historic occasions -- it was Karl Marx who gave such moments the classic definition "revolutionary praxis" -- a kind of instant solidarity appeared last Wednesday. It bound together the disparate groups -- students, workers, professionals, academics -- whose union China's leaders had long feared.