Obituary: Li Peng died on July 22nd

HIS DIARY entry for April 27th 1989 recorded the moment when the trouble touched Li Peng directly. On his way home from his prime ministerial office in Beijing, his car was blocked by student protesters. His driver and bodyguards—and he was glad to have both at that moment—had to find another way round.

After days of pro-democracy protests by students in Tiananmen Square, nothing had been done about them. Nobody had come to beat up and drag away the protesters, as had happened during the only previous outbreak of large-scale unrest on that vast plaza during Communist rule. That was in 1976, when people were mourning the death of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. Li had mourned too, perhaps more than many, because Zhou had cared for him as a child after his father had been killed, a martyr in the revolutionary struggle. Zhou’s morals and principles had deeply influenced him then. But the public grieving in 1976 had turned into political protest against Zhou’s hardline enemies, and that had been sharply put down. Now, 13 years later, many Chinese were allowing themselves to believe that the party might at last be about to take off in a new political direction, one more open to dissent. This Li could not allow. He would rather die, he wrote in his diary, than let the protests get out of hand.