Ren Zhongyi: One of the Chinese Communist Party's most vocal advocates of political reform, Ren Zhongyi, has died at 91.
Ren died last Tuesday in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province in southern China,where he oversaw the province's economic take-off in the early 1980s.
Born in Hebei province in northern China in 1914, Ren joined the Communist Party in 1936 and served as a devoted official in the country's northeast after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
Ren survived several purges under Mao Zedong but was toppled for being a "capitalist roader" during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. Ren later expressed contrition for his own involvement in persecuting others.
Ren was sent to Guangdong as provincial party secretary in 1980, two years after Deng Xiaoping re-emerged as a reformist party chief and designated several cities in the province as "special economic zones" for open, pro-market policies.
Ren gradually liberalised Guangdong's strictly planned economy and opened the province to overseas investment, the bulk of which came from neighbouring Hong Kong.
Today, Guangdong is a global manufacturing hub. The province has China's highest GDP and accounts for about a third of the country's exports.
Ren retired in 1985 but still wielded influence together with other reformist party elders. He was an outspoken critic of the party's reluctance to introduce political reforms, which have stalled since Deng ordered troops to crush the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests.
Ren also privately sympathised with Zhao Ziyang, the reformist party chief whom Deng purged in 1989.
In a 2004 magazine interview, Ren said Deng Xiaoping's mistake was his failure to push forward political reforms as he did economic changes.
Ren blamed a lack of political reform for widespread corruption, and publicly advocated a Western-style system of separation of powers, with an independent judiciary and legislature - a taboo concept in China.
He also said "special political zones" could be set up to develop democratic elections. Despite his advancing years, Ren still had enough influence to swing policy. In 2004, he wrote a letter with another party veteran to the hardline Guangdong party boss Zhang Dejiang, who had jailed the editor and manager of progressive local newspaper the Southern Metropolitan Daily.
The editor was later released and the manager given a shorter sentence. Many involved in the case believed Ren's advocacy saved them from harsher treatment.
Ren Zhongyi: born 1914, died November 22nd, 2005