BEIJING, Jan 29: Hundreds of mourners braved police checks on Saturday to attend a low-key invitation-only funeral for Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese Communist Party chief removed for opposing the army crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen protesters.

Nervous the ceremony might spark protest, China's leaders had wanted to permit only a quick funeral for Mr Zhao who, as premier in the 1980s, launched market reforms that turned the country into a fledgling economic powerhouse from a centrally planned backwater.

However, in a nod to the seniority of a man whom the party had effectively made a non-person by keeping him under house arrest for the past 15 years, China's number four leader, Jia Qinglin, joined mourners filing past his body at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

A dozen police checked identity documents and invitations of mourners and turned away non-mainland Chinese from the funeral for Mr Zhao, who died in a Beijing hospital on Jan 17 aged 85.

"My heart is heavy. I did not expect so many people to show up," said mourner Shi Yijun, an author on party history.

Weeping mourners bowed three times before the body, which lay on a dais shrouded in a Communist Party flag. They shook hands with family members clad in black mourning dress as funeral music played. His ailing widow, Liang Boqi, was not present.

A banner in Chinese characters above the body read: "Ceremony to bid farewell to Comrade Zhao Ziyang's remains." Photographs were banned at the ceremony, which took place without the fanfare normally accorded a top leader.-Reuters