Chinese Leader Xi Jinping Signals Return to the Mao Era
Analysis
April 4, 2021, Easter Day, was the same day as the Ching Ming Festival in China, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day, the day when the Chinese honor ancestors and families gather to pay respect to the dead. On this day, the Chinese regime quietly opened the grave of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing, but blocked that of former General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who stepped down because of his opposition to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. This opening of one and closing of another released an important political signal.
Photo: RFA
The family members of late ousted Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang paid their respects at his grave on the outskirts of Beijing on Sunday, with tight security ensuring that nobody else could enter the private cemetery where his ashes are interred, RFA has learned.
Zhao s son Zhao Erjun and daughter Wang Yannan, along with more than 20 friends and relatives, laid floral wreaths and other offerings at the site in a brief ceremony lasting just 20 minutes during the traditional grave-tending festival of Qing Ming.
The former premier s ashes were interred along with those of his wife Liang Boqi at the private Tianshou Garden cemetery in the Beijing satellite town of Changping in October 2019, after being kept at Zhao s family home at No. 6, Fuqiang Alley in Beijing since his death on Jan. 17, 2005.