Deposed Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang is "stable" after medical treatment, the foreign ministry said, but denied reports he was dead. Zhao, who was ousted after opposing the military crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, fell ill recently, the ministry said. "Zhao Ziyang is an old man in his 80s. He recently became ill. After undergoing medical treatment, at present his illness is stable," his spokesman Kong Quan said. The Chinese government almost never comments on Zhao, 85, even though he was the country's second most powerful man after late patriarch Deng Xiaoping during the first decade of China's reform in the 1980s. Hong Kong's Oriental Daily said Zhao had died on Saturday from respiratory failure and complications from heart disease. "Such reports are strictly untrue," Kong said. Democracy campaigner Ren Wanding, who said he spoke to people close to Zhao, said he was in hospital for cardiovascular-related problems. Other people with close contacts to Zhao's family also said he was alive, but in hospital. The Chinese government fears that the death of Zhao would become a rallying point for disillusionment in Chinese society, including a soaring gap between rich and poor, analysts said. "There is a concern that the passing of Zhao may encourage some old cadres, including some elders, and a segment of the intelligentsia to demand a reverse of the verdict on the June 4 Tiananmen incident," said Joseph Cheng at the City University of Hong Kong. But "the leaders are very worried that if you agree to re-examine June 4, then it will be seen as opening the front gate for the demands of democracy." Zhao, who served as both the head of the Communist Party and as prime minister for much of the 1980s, was sacked by Deng and other elders after he opposed the crackdown on students who gathered on Tiananmen Square for six weeks of massive, unprecedented democracy protests. Zhao was last seen in public with then aide Wen Jiabao - China's current prime minister - addressing Beijing students on Tiananmen Square on May 19 that year, the day before a divided Chinese leadership declared martial law. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Purged Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang poses in his home in Beijing in this file photo taken in 2002. (REUTERS)