Zhao Ziyang was a politician in the People's Republic of China. He was Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1980 to 1987, and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1987 to 1989. As a high-ranking government official, he was a leading reformer who implemented market reforms that greatly increased production and sought measures to streamline the bloated bureaucracy and fight corruption. Once slated as Deng Xiaoping's successor, Zhao Ziyang was purged for his sympathetic stance toward the student demonstrators in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and spent the last fifteen years of his life under house arrest.