Sino File | From Mao to Tiananmen, Hu Yaobang is an icon of China’s reform – and a reminder of how little has changed
- A passionate liberaliser in the 1980s, Hu relentlessly sought to overturn the remnants of the Maoist era.
- His death in 1989 triggered widespread public mourning, which snowballed into weeks of student-led pro-democracy protests
A passionate liberaliser in the 1980s, Hu relentlessly sought to overturn the purges and ideological shibboleths of the Maoist era. But he was removed from the party’s top position of general secretary in 1987 and sidelined for tolerating “bourgeois liberalisation”, or having sympathy for student demands for democratic reform.
Hu was a communist veteran, joining the party as a teenager and going on to become one of the youngest participants in the legendary Long March (1934-1935). But his liberal political and economic views made him the enemy of several powerful party elders, who opposed capitalistic free-market reforms.
Since then, Hu has become an icon for political reform and democratic change in China. He has become the benchmark that people might use to measure other leaders’ integrity, performance, and ideological and political inclinations.