Deadlock over Zhao funeral plans

By Francis Markus
BBC News, Shanghai

Zhao is mourned relatively openly in Hong Kong - but not in China

Planning for the funeral of China's disgraced former Communist party leader is reported to be in deadlock.

Zhao Ziyang, who died on Monday after 15 years under house arrest, was sacked after opposing the suppression of pro-democracy protests in June 1989.

Sources in Mr Zhao's family say there is still no agreement about what his funeral oration should say.

Meanwhile there are reports that a former Tiananmen protester who planned a march to mourn him has been detained.

It has been nearly a week since Zhao Ziyang died in a Beijing hospital.

But there has been no sign yet that the fraught arguments over the 85-year-old's funeral arrangements have been resolved.

It is not just a matter of wreaths and seating plans.

What goes into the eulogy of the man who tearfully opposed the army's 1989 suppression of the Tiananmen protests goes to the heart of the Communist party's claim to legitimacy.

China's leadership needs to strike a delicate balance.

It is adamant that there will be no reversal of the verdict on the Tiananmen clampdown but it is also wary of inflaming people's feelings by seeming to pay Mr Zhao insufficient honour.

So far the authorities have kept a tight lid on media coverage and an even warier eye out for any signs of the protest which has flared up after popular leaders' deaths in the past.

Sources say a former Tiananmen protester, Zhao Xin, has been detained after he sought permission to stage a march mourning Mr Zhao.

However, the leadership can probably be reasonably confident that the change of generation during Mr Zhao's 15 years of house arrest has made him increasingly irrelevant to the lives of today's Chinese students.