Yan Mingfu, Chinese Communist Party negotiator with Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989, dies aged 91

Yan invited protest leaders to a dialogue on May 14, 1989 but failed to persuade them to stop their hunger strike
He was removed from his positions soon after June 4 crackdown, returned years later as vice-minister of civil affairs and continued public service into retirement

China’s Communist Party

William Zhengin Hong KongandJun Maiin Beijing

Published: 5:24pm, 3 Jul 2023

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Yan Mingfu, a former political heavyweight of China’s ruling Communist Party best remembered for mediating between Beijing and student protesters before the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989, has died aged 91.

Yan died in Beijing on Monday morning “due to illnesses”, according to an announcement by his family sent to their friends and seen by the South China Morning Post. They said a simple memorial ceremony would be organised to commemorate him in the coming days but did not give further details.

Yan – who was then the party’s United Front Work Department chief and secretary of the party’s decision-making Central Committee secretariat – was one of the top party representatives to reach out to liberal journalists, intellectuals and protesting students in Tiananmen Square in May 1989.

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He entered the limelight when he became the ruling party’s representative, inviting the student protest leaders, including Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi, to a dialogue at the department on May 14, 1989, after liberal intellectuals sympathetic to the students – including Yan Jiaqi, Dai Qing and Liu Xiaobo – failed to persuade them to stop their hunger strike.

On May 16, 1989, Yan was told by the then general secretary of the party, Zhao Ziyang, to go to Tiananmen Square to continue the persuasion effort after his two days of talks went nowhere.

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There, Yan tried to reassure the students by saying he was willing to join the sit-in and even asked the students to hold him as “hostage”, hoping to get the students’ consent to end their hunger strike.

But his plea to the students failed to turn the situation around and instead was used as evidence by hardliners of his failure to follow the party line. Yan was removed from his positions just a month after the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown and following the ousting of his boss Zhao Ziyang.

Yan returned to government work in 1991, but was sidelined to the position of vice-minister of civil affairs. He retired from the post in July 1997.

He was born in northeastern Liaoning province in 1931, the son of Yan Baohang, was a top communist spy serving in the nationalist Kuomintang government.

Yan Mingfu continued to play a role in Beijing’s overseas liaison work in retirement. Photo: Handout

After graduating from the Harbin Foreign Language College in 1949, Yan Mingfu became the official Russian translator for party founder Mao Zedong.

He was appointed chief of the United Front Work Department in 1985 and elected to the party’s Central Committee two years later.

After retiring, Yan continued to play a role in Beijing’s overseas liaison work. He attended the funeral of Chinese warlord Chang Hsueh-liang in Honolulu in 2001.

Chang changed China’s history in 1936 when he held KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek hostage in Xian and forced him to cooperate with the communists to fight against the Japanese invading army in an episode known as “the Xian Incident”. Following his release, Chiang had Chang arrested and put under house arrest for several decades.

Yan Baohang tried to broker Chang’s release via Communist Party leader Zhou Enlai, but was not successful, according to Yan Mingfu’s memoir published in 2015. Chang moved to the US in 1993.

Yan also turned to charity work after retirement, and helped found the China Charity Federation.

It became the biggest and most influential government-linked charity platform, connecting with other charity organisations in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and overseas and raising hundred of millions of yuan for China’s major disaster relief works, including major flooding in 1998 and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.