The one-time heir-apparent to Deng Xiaoping whose long party career was defined by the moment he visited student protesters in Tiananmen Square with tears in his eyes, spent his last 15 years confined to house arrest by successors who feared his residual influence as an icon of reform.

“He is free at last,” Zhao’s daughter, Wang Yannan, said in a statement obtained by Reuters. Her father died in a coma at a Beijing hospital early yesterday after a series of strokes. He spent the final years of his life sequestered behind the red doors of a courtyard home in central Beijing, emerging only for brief visits to the provinces or to the golf course. Unmarked cars and police were ever-present on the street outside. Yesterday morning, vast Tiananmen Square saw a mere scattering of tourists, Beijing resident and guards. Irish flags fluttered to mark a visit by Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.

The successors of a man linked with pushing economic reforms in the early 1980s fear his death could serve as a rallying point for reformers, for workers bitter at high unemployment and for poor farmers envious of wealthy urban residents.

He was never again seen in public after May 19, 1989, when he appeared in the square and issued a tearful appeal to student protesters to leave. The next day the government declared martial law and the army, backed by tanks, crushed the demonstrations on June 3-4. Hundreds were killed. The son of a landlord and farming expert was then sacked as party general secretary. Jiang Zemin took his place, ruling for more than a decade before handing over to Hu Jintao in late 2002. Market reaction to Zhao’s death was muted, although analysts said investors would be on guard for any political fallout.

China’s political and economic landscape has been transformed since 1989, and after years of being kept from public view, Zhao remains largely an enigma for younger Chinese. “The leadership will take precautions anyway, with stepped-up security and surveillance — they always do,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert at the University of Michigan. “But will this be a spark for another protest movement? I have no idea. But I would doubt that it would,” he said.

While Zhao’s reforms helped to give birth to a new middle class, social pressures provide the potential for unrest. “That was a time the regime was in deep trouble. Now it seems the regime is rather well consolidated,” said Andrew Nathan, a China expert at Columbia University.

“But on the other hand, the cities are full of petitioners and migrant workers and laid-off factory workers and pensioners without pensions, so it’s a dangerous mix of people who may take the opportunity to remember,” said Nathan. “He stood for something better.” China is leaving nothing to chance. The government tightened security around the square once Zhao’s health began to deteriorate last week. Police and plainclothes agents stopped foreign reporters outside his home.

His successors have reason to fear his posthumous influence. The death in January 1976 of populist premier Zhou Enlai led to an outpouring of grief and protests on Tiananmen Square. The passing of purged reformist party chief Hu Yaobang in April 1989 set off the demonstrations that culminated in the army massacre. China’s leaders have repeatedly ruled out anyshift towards Western style democracy.

Indeed, a news blackout existed even as Zhao’s health began to fail. He was taken to hospital on Dec. 5 for chronic pneumonia and had been in a coma since Friday after multiple strokes. “He died at 7:01 a.m. (2301 GMT Sunday). The medical report is not out yet,” Zhao’s son, Liang Fang, who adopted his mother’s surname, told Reuters. “National leaders came to pay respects but it is not convenient to say who they are,” said Liang. Such acts are delicate in China’s party hierarchy, and are an indication of the finesse that Zhao’s Communist Party successors must exercise as they decide the level of ceremony with which to salute the passing of a leader who was one of their own without evoking popular anger.

“The thing about him is he never recanted, he never admitted he’d done anything wrong, so that made him an awkward person for the party leadership to deal with,” Nathan said.

<B>Benjamin Kang Lim</B>

China’s icon of reform

Born into a landlord family in the central province of Henan on October 17, 1919, Zhao joined the Communist Party at 20 and became a local official and rural activist during the wars against Japan and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. After the Communist victory in 1949, Zhao rose through party ranks. He was an obvious target for persecution by Mao Zedong’s Red Guards in the ultra-leftist 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Then first secretary of the southern province of Guangdong, Zhao was purged and dragged through the streets wearing a dunce’s cap. But in 1971 he regained an official post and by 1974 was back in his Guangdong job. He made his name in Deng Xiaoping’s home province of Sichuan in the southwest where he became party secretary in 1975 and pioneered new market-oriented policies.

Fertile Sichuan was in such economic shambles that it had to import grain while many peasants were reduced to selling their daughters. Zhao diagnosed the problem as bureaucratic centralisation and a lack of incentives for producers.