When the rumours first spread on the weekend of Jan14-15, China's totalitarian leaders scoffed at them. Then, when Japan's media started reporting it, Chinese leaders denied the whole thing. Soon, with no place to hide, they finally admitted that former Chinese Communist Party president and famous reformist Zhao Ziyang had died, aged 85.

But China's oppressors are a recalcitrant and abominable lot. Never mind the world's eulogies for the old reformist: Beijing wouldn't even utter a single syllable about the man the party and its henchmen had kept under house-arrest, politically scorned and exorcised for his support of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy students.

In life Zhao was rebuked for his liberal leanings; in death his jailers seem bent on continuing their meanness. So paranoid about their stranglehold on power they were that they heightened security as news spread of Zhao's death, afraid a fresh round of pro-democracy protests would break out spontaneously.

As if.