China on Wednesday mourned the death of the last leader of the erstwhile Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev amid a spate of criticism in the official and social media here over his attempts to open up the country and strike rapprochement with the US, leading to the collapse of the mighty communist nation.
"Gorbachev made positive contributions to the normalisation of China-Soviet Union relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said when asked for Beijing's reaction to the death of the former Soviet Communist leader during whose tenure the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. "We mourn his death and express our condolences to his family," Zhao told the media in a brief cryptic reply to a question seeking Beijing's reactions.