Fang Lizhi
As liberal leaders Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang guided the country through economic reforms, conservative leaders pushed back with a Campaign against "Spiritual Pollution" in 1983. Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping sided with the reformers and ended that campaign. By 1986, newspaper editorials began calling for political reform and university students organized democracy salons. Liberal physicist Fang Lizhi toured campuses, advocating democratic reforms and the independence of universities from the government. In December 1986, student protests in Hefei spread to Beijing, where students marched around campuses in the university district northwest of the city, calling for direct election of political representatives, freedom of the press and release of political prisoners. On January 1 and 2, 1987, several hundred students attempted to march on Tiananmen Square in defiance of orders of the city government. The protests attracted little public attention but party conservatives reacted with fury at Hu Yaobang for his "weak" response to "bourgeois liberalism". Hu Yaobang was forced to resign on January 17 and Fang Lizhi was expelled from the Communist Party. Zhao Ziyang succeeded Hu as Party General Secretary and Li Peng became Premier.