Apparently there has been somewhat of a shift in the central government's official position on the passing of one of its former supreme leaders, Zhao Ziyang. Or perhaps not. The lack of any meaningful immediate recognition of the death last Monday in Beijing of the 85 year-old former prime minister and general secretary of the CPC by the government he once ran, might very well have been part of an overall plan to test the societal waters a bit before tiptoeing into at least some level of official state mourning.
I certainly do not know. But Joseph Kahn of theNew York Times is working hard to keep us informed:
BEIJING, Jan. 20 - The Chinese authorities will hold a low-key funeral service for Zhao Ziyang, the purged Communist Party chief, and have given permission for his burial in a cemetery reserved for senior party officials, a government spokesman and members of his family said Thursday.
The decision signals a softening of the government's position on how to handle Mr. Zhao's death. Top officials previously banned nearly all news coverage and denied Mr. Zhao the usual honors accorded to senior leaders when they die.
It remains unclear whether the party will present a eulogy at the funeral, as would be customary.
Mr. Zhao, who died Monday at the age of 85, lost power in 1989 after he opposed the use of force against democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square and spent nearly 16 years under house arrest.
The authorities have scaled back the police presence at Mr. Zhao's house in central Beijing, allowing more mourners to visit the memorial shrine that his family set up there. At least two popular Web-based discussion sites began allowing people to post comments about him.
