Almost 500 previously unpublished documents about Zhao Ziyang, the bold reformer who served as China’s premier (1980-1987) and Communist Party general secretary (1987-1989), were smuggled out of China and published in late July by the Chinese University Press in Hong Kong. The documents show how Zhao led a decade of transformational economic reform and sketched out plans for political reform. Zhao was purged in 1989 and died under house arrest in 2005. The documents have sparked a renewed interest in his time in power and offer an opportunity to imagine what might have been had the man and his ideas survived.