On 18 October 1989, the 77-year-old Erich Honecker was replaced as the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party by Egon Krenz. Officially Honecker resigned due to ill health, but he had been sharply criticized by the party. Although Krenz, 52, was the youngest member of the Politburo, he was a hardliner who had congratulated the Chinese regime on its brutal crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstration.