China?s leaders are nervous about the residual influence of Zhao Ziyang, purged as Communist Party chief for opposing the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen protests, and are trying to rub his name from history, a former aide said.

Silver-haired Zhao, 84, is in declining health and lives under house arrest in Beijing at his tightly guarded courtyard home.

Chinese leaders fear Zhao could emerge as a rallying point for reformists in the government, analysts say. They fear his death could spark fresh protests by unemployed workers or farmers bitter about heavy taxes and a widening rich-poor gap.

?(They) are constantly worried about him and are determined to erase his name from the hearts and minds of the people,? former aide Bao Tong said in a statement seen by Reuters yesterday ahead of the 15th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed.

?They want people to forget Zhao as a facilitator of China?s economic reform, forget him as the drafter of the proposal of China?s political reform, forget him as the protector of democratic principle and rule of law in China,? said Bao, former secretary to the then five-member Politburo Standing Committee and the most senior Chinese official jailed for opposing the massacre.

Zhao was last seen in public on May 19, 1989, when he tearfully begged student protesters to leave Tiananmen Square, where the demonstrations were centred. Beijing declared martial law the next day and troops backed by tanks crushed the movement on June 3-4.

?When absolute power went insane, it was Zhao who rang the bell of reason and compassion,? said Bao, who was released from jail in 1996.

<B>CIA funding ?</B>

Bao remains a thorn in the government?s side and has been put under tight surveillance round the clock. Telephone calls to his Beijing home were repeatedly cut.

Zhao was put promptly put under house arrest and then came the purge, details of which are only emerging 15 years later.

Following his ouster, Zhao was accused of accepting funds from the US Central Intelligence Agency through Hungarian-born billionaire financier George Soros, a retired Communist Party cadre with close links to Zhao.

Wang Renzhong, then a vice-chairman of an advisory body to parliament, headed a task force which investigated Zhao and his children?s business activities, according to the essay by Chen Zhengde ? a pseudonym ? which was given to Reuters.

The essay, a common way of expressing political opinion in rigidly controlled China, was intended for external circulation. For safety reasons, Chen did not divulge when or how he got his information.

The probe ended in 1991 after Zhao wrote two reports defending himself and then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping ruled that criticism of Zhao should stop, the essay, written to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the protests, said.

Investigators failed to uncover evidence that Zhao received CIA funds through Soros. Nevertheless, Zhao was accused of ?backing the turmoil? and ?splitting the party?, it added.

And Soros denied CIA involvement in the now-defunct Foundation for Chinese Reform and Opening, which he set up in the late 1980s to finance trips to the United States by liberal Chinese intellectuals and the purchase of Western books on social sciences.

Zhao?s successor, Jiang Zemin, stepped down as party chief in 1997 and was replaced by Hu Jintao, who is also state president.

Zhao was hospitalised in February with pneumonia after his health began declining last year, two independent Chinese sources have said. He is recuperating at home but needs an oxygen mask. He had a pacemaker implanted in 1998.

One source with close ties to Zhao provided Reuters with a previously unpublished photograph of Zhao standing in his courtyard in 2002. His old age has been lonely and undignified.

Zhao?s retired subordinates, friends and relatives were allowed to visit him after 1989, but visitors were restricted to relatives after the 15th party congress in 1997 when he wrote to the leadership calling for political rehabilitation of the protests.

<B>Declining health</B>

Zhao was allowed an occasional round of golf, but requests to travel to the southern province of Guandgong and suburban Beijing were ignored, Chen?s essay read.

When Zhao wrote asking the leadership not to consider him a factor of instability and to protest against his house arrest, they went unanswered, it said, adding that he began writing his memoirs and requested access to official transcripts of his speeches, but the request fell on deaf ears.

He lives with his daughter, who has changed her name to Wang Yannan and works at an auction house, the source said.

Zhao?s wife Liang Boqi suffered a stroke for a second time last year. ?It was a blow to the old man,? the source said.

<B>Benjamin KANG LIM</B>