PRESIDENT Jiang Zemin emerged yesterday from a six-day mourning period for the former Chinese strongman, Deng Xiaoping, seemingly strengthened in his bid to become China's new paramount leader.
In a eulogy at yesterday's state funeral service for his mentor, the president gave every indication that he is firmly in command, and promised to continue the reforms set in motion by the country's revolutionary hero 20 years ago.
The usually bland Mr Jiang (70), who is also head of the army and the Communist Party, surprised a nation watching on television by weeping at the start of his eulogy, delivered to 10,000 mourners gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People beneath a huge photograph of a smiling Deng.
This, and the extraordinary scenes on television the previous evening when the nation saw Mr Deng's body before cremation and a tearful family, has served to "humanise" the party leaders at a difficult time of transition.
Top leaders lined up yesterday before a flower-covered platform where Deng's ashes lay in a small box covered with a red hammer-and-sickle banner. Above it hung another banner endorsing Mr Jiang as the heir apparent. It said: "Under the party's leadership with Jiang Zemin as its core, carry out the unfulfilled wishes of Deng Xiaoping."
Tiananmen Square was closed during the morning ceremony. There was a small number of arrests when it reopened and some individuals staged unauthorised demonstrations of mourning.
In factories, schools and railway stations around the country people assembled to witness the ceremony on television. However, traffic around Tiananmen Square did not, stop and few factory horns or whistles were heard to mourn Deng, who died last Wednesday, aged 92.
In a reference to the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, Mr Jiang used conciliatory language which observers said was sign that the time is coming to heal the national wound caused by the bloody suppression of the pro-democracy movement.
He used the term "politics disturbances" to characterise the occurrence and praised the party, the government and the people for weathering a difficult period. Under Deng in 1992, Mr Jiang called it "counter-revolutionary turmoil" and praised the heroism of the army.
Vowing to push ahead with reform, Mr Jiang told the mourners: "The decision to take economic construction as the centre represents the most fundamental achievement made under Comrade Deng Xiaoping's leadership in the effort to bring order out of chaos. All our work must be subordinate to and serve this centre. Development is the most essential criterion."
In Hong Kong, where 50,000 people visited China's official mission to pay their respects, ships sounded their horns, buses trailed black ribbons, and flags were flown at half-mast. In some schools children stood to attention for three minutes.
On the Beijing Commodity Exchange, traders stood with heads bowed to honour the reformer who introduced China to capitalist-style innovations.
. Bomb blasts killed four or five people in the western Chinese city of Urumqi, a spokesman for a local television station said yesterday.
An official at the Military Region General Hospital in Urumqi, capital of the predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang, said at least 37 injured had been admitted after the two bomb blasts. Two were admitted to another city hospital.
The bombs were planted in two city buses and went off at about 6.30 p.m. (10.30 a.m. Irish time). The city is reported to be under tight security in the wake of the bombs.