Bao Tong, Zhao Ziyang’s aide during the 1989 democracy movement, has written an essay titled, “Remembering Zhao Ziyang”:
For genuine and long-term stability, Zhao proposed reforms that ultimately aimed at the legalization and systemization of democracy. He wished to establish the kind of democratic politics that could support and nurture a healthy market economy. Although the short-term practical objectives of Zhao’s political reforms were limited by the circumstances in which they were proposed, the measures all aimed at containing Communist Party power and represented a concrete step toward returning, peacefully, power to China’s people.
