Late Chinese ex-Premier Zhao Ziyang’s memoir, ‘Prisoner of the State’ contradicts the Chinese government’s version of the events during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and asserts that there were more peaceful options than a military attack on the protestors, editors of the book said.’ ‘ Former Time Magazine editor Adi Ignatius and Bao Pu, the son of Zhao’s chief adviser Bao Tong, spoke on what the book reveals about the inner workings of the Chinese government during the 1980s at the George Sherman Union Tuesday to about 95 attendees.’ The editors focused on early summer 1989, when student discontent erupted in the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, which ended in a military crackdown that killed several hundred people.’ ‘ The Tiananmen protests came after a long period of upper-level struggles between those who wanted to continue Mao Zedong’s disastrous economic policies after his death in 1976 and those who wanted to loosen government control of the market, including Zhao and to some extent Deng Xiaoping, then the most powerful man in China, editors said.’ ‘ ‘Demonstrators became pawns in that struggle,’ Ignatius said.’ According to the Chinese government’s version of events, the protestors had taken over a ‘sacred’ part of China and could only be removed by force, Ignatius said. Zhao’s memoir clarified such clashes, which were obscured by the Communist Party of China’s longstanding policy of maintaining the impression of Party unity, they said. ‘Zhao was the one person who conceptualized . . . that China’s economic reform was market reform,’ Bao said. By his death in 2005, Zhao had come to believe that the only way for China to combat mounting social injustice was to become a Western-style parliamentary democracy, Bao said.’ Ignatius emphasized that such a conviction was impressive for someone who had benefited all his life from China’s Communist government. Bao said this was not a change of his beliefs but what Zhao felt was the logical conclusion of economic reform. Ignatius, who reported on the Tiananmen massacre, said Zhao wrote his memoir in secret in or around 2000 then smuggled it to Hong Kong through friends.’ Zhao had been under house arrest since 1989 for his opposition to the more hard-line position of Deng, he said. The secrecy continued with the transcription and translation of the memoir, Renee Chiang, the third editor of the book and Bao’s wife, said.’ She said she and Bao, who live in Hong Kong, could only contact people face-to-face for fear of government surveillance. ‘No-tech beats high-tech,’ she said, noting that the precaution slowed work considerably. ‘Our assumption was that if Chinese authorities in Beijing knew about [the memoir], they would squeeze Zhao’s family,’ Ignatius said.’ Ignatius said the Chinese government has not aired an official position on the memoir. ‘A book like this could never be sold overtly in China,’ Ignatius said. Bao said 200,000 copies of the book have nevertheless been sold in Hong Kong. The English translation of the book was on the New York Times best-seller list last June. BU Center for the Study of Asia administrator Mike Carroll said the center sponsored the lecture.’ ‘It’s not often you get the perspective of somebody who saw the inner dealings of the inner Chinese government,’ he said. ‘This was clearly one of our biggest events.” Attendees said they had mixed feelings about the discussion. College of Arts and Sciences senior Lawrence Jones said he disagreed that Zhao’s memoir shed much light on Chinese politics.’ He said the lecture’s focus on political reform in China ignored the economic condition of the Chinese people. ‘A lot of people forget just how poor they are,’ he said. College of General Studies sophomore Florian Dhondt, who has been to China twice, said he is ‘always glad to learn more’ about the country.