“I am old enough and tough enough that if there is any pressure from the government, I can hold on here.”

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and JONATHAN ANSFIELD


BEIJING - For nearly two decades, the Communist Party strove to wipe out the national memory of Zhao Ziyang, the reform-minded party secretary who opposed the use of force against pro-democracy protesters in 1989.

So when a former aide of Mr. Zhao’s, Du Daozheng, disclosed in May that he had helped secretly record Mr. Zhao’s memoir for posthumous publication, Mr. Du’s daughter refused to let him walk outside alone for fear of possible repercussions.

She need not have worried. On June 25, a top official in charge of propaganda came to Mr. Du’s Beijing apartment with a reassuring message from Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Communist Party and the government. Mr. Du said he was told that, as an old friend of Mr. Zhao’s, “Zhongnanhai and party central can understand why you did this.”

Until he was ousted in 1989 with Mr. Zhao, Mr. Du served as head of the government’s press and publications administration, an agency that helps enforce censors’ orders.

Now he spends his days jousting with such officials. Helping with Mr. Zhao’s memoir - a rare look at the party’s inner conflicts - was a particularly daring thrust.

But strategic ventures into forbidden territory are characteristic of his monthly scholarly journal, Yanhuang Chunqiu.

After a string of journal articles last year touched on Mr. Zhao’s accomplishments, party authorities issued an internal regulation that forbids retired government or party officials to serve as publication directors. Mr. Du said he dealt with the order by reshuffling titles.

“I just ignore it,” he said. “I am old enough and tough enough that if there is any pressure from the government, I can hold on here.”

Mr. Du sees his magazine, distributed to some 100,000 subscribers, as “the best thing he has done in his life,” his daughter said.

Mr. Du survives the skirmishes because he is 86, wily and quietly supported by certain party luminaries. He says as many as 100 former party officials support his efforts. Some current officials also sympathize, he suggests. “Nobody dares close it,” he said.

Others suggest the party can afford to be tolerant. Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst of China politics, said that Mr. Du and other liberal-minded party “elders” posed no particular threat to today’s Communist Party, so mild reprimands sufficed.

“I admire the courage and the conviction, but the conservatives really won this battle some time ago,” he said.

Ever the strategist, Mr. Du recommended that Mr. Zhao’s memoir be published only after the 20th anniversary of the crackdown in June. But with the support of Mr. Zhao’s family, Bao Pu, the son of Mr. Zhao’s top aide, arranged publication in May of a Chinese version in Hong Kong and an English version, titled “Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.”

Hong Kong bookshops have reportedly sold 100,000 copies. “I have not seen such excitement about a book in years,” said Lam Mingkei, owner of Causeway Bay Bookstore, a prominent bookseller in Hong Kong.

Mr. Du said he believed that the democratic ideals expressed in Mr. Zhao’s book and in the pages of his beloved journal would eventually take hold.

In the meantime, he says, he will defend his journal’s role. Said his daughter: “My father knows how to fight.”


SHIHO FUKADA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES


Jing Zhang contributed research from Beijing, and Hilda Wang from Hong Kong.