In 1989, Zhao Ziyang was politically purged for telling Gorbachev that Deng Xiaoping was the behind-the-scenes ruler and for refusing to order the crackdown

In 1989, Zhao Ziyang bluntly told visiting Gorbachev that Deng Xiaoping was the absolute authority ruling from behind the curtain. During the June Fourth period, as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, he was unwilling to order the massacre, and was therefore politically purged.