For many older Chinese and longtime China watchers, it was a jarring moment.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, seated in front of a giant red curtain, was reading a speech last week praising his 1980s predecessor – the late revolutionary and Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang – considered one of the boldest reformers of China’s post-Mao era.
Mr. Hu’s death in April 1989 unleashed an outpouring of grief that helped trigger nationwide protests for political liberalization, centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Those demonstrations ended with the deadly military crackdown of June 4, 1989.
Why We Wrote This
What does it mean when Xi Jinping – China’s strongman leader – praises Hu Yaobang, the liberal reformer whose sudden death sparked the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests? Our reporter asks sinologists who study Chinese leaders.
For years afterward, Mr. Hu was rarely mentioned in official discourse or state media.
Last week, however, Mr. Xi called Mr. Hu “pragmatic,” ”courageous,” and “a pioneer.”
“Comrade Hu Yaobang was a … loyal communist warrior” who made “immortal contributions” to China’s revolution, modernization, and “reform and opening up,” Mr. Xi said at a symposium at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing commemorating the 110th anniversary of Mr. Hu’s birth in 1915.
The contrast is stark between the China of Mr. Xi, who has greatly centralized Communist Party power and his own position at its core, and that of Mr. Hu, who favored relaxing the state’s grip. Experts say that Mr. Xi is carefully navigating Mr. Hu’s legacy to support his own objectives – foremost among them to shore up the Party’s overarching control – as China’s economy slows down.
“Xi Jinping is calling upon the legacy of Hu Yaobang to support things that Xi wants to push,” such as loyalty to the Party and Marxism, says Timothy Cheek, a professor with the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and department of history at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “He doesn’t mention that Hu wanted to separate party and governance issues, and have open media.”
Legacy of openness
Mr. Hu is known for championing not only China’s sweeping 1980s economic market reforms, but also government accountability, separation of Communist Party and state powers, and greater political openness. Unlike Chinese leaders today, he often held unscripted, freewheeling public exchanges with foreign officials and journalists.
Mr. Hu was forced to resign as party chief in 1987 after hard-liners accused him of leniency toward an earlier wave of student protests, but he remained on the Politburo until his death.
Mr. Xi’s remarks were not entirely unprecedented – he spoke at a similar event in 2015 honoring Mr. Hu. But that was earlier in Mr. Xi’s tenure, before he’d fostered a strongman reputation, and the contrast between the two leaders appeared less stark.
Mr. Xi’s public lauding of Mr. Hu is also notable, given the late leader’s association with two controversial Chinese political events: the 1989 unrest and Mao Zedong’s radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Mr. Hu took the lead in restoring the rights of millions of people purged during Mao’s decade of upheaval.
“It’s unusual,” says Chen Jian, Director of the Center on Global History, Economy, and Culture at New York University–Shanghai and East China Normal University.
“By celebrating [Hu Yaobang’s] birthday, there’s a risk of making people think about 1989, which is completely forbidden,” he says. “It’s unusual also that Xi Jinping praises Hu’s contribution to the correction of the Cultural Revolution’s huge mistakes.”
But for Mr. Xi, the rewards may be worth the risk.
Harnessing Mr. Hu’s reputation
As China’s economy continues to slow, facing significant youth unemployment and low consumer and business confidence, Mr. Xi may seek to align with Mr. Hu’s image as a pragmatist who cared about people’s livelihoods.
Mr. Xi could be “borrowing Hu Yaobang’s good reputation to signal that the Party is paying attention to the economy, and to buttress his own claim to have the moral high ground,” says Dr. Cheek.
Indeed, many Chinese who best remember Mr. Hu and benefited from his reforms have not fared as well economically in recent years.
“Today in China the people who feel their life is hitting countercurrents are the people who gained the most from the reform and opening project – people in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s – the Chinese middle class,” says Dr. Chen. “For the first time, they feel that the quality of their life is not improving.”
Mr. Xi may also be motivated to praise Mr. Hu to bolster his own standing within China’s tightly connected political elite, which includes many offspring of the revolutionary old guard. Mr. Xi, the son of revolutionary leader Xi Zhongxun, is himself a member of this generation of what are often called “princelings,” many of whom were invited to the commemoration.
“This is an effort by Xi Jinping to consolidate his own reputation among this group of people,” says Dr. Chen.
On a more personal level, Mr. Xi could feel obligated by the role that Mr. Hu played in the rehabilitation of Mr. Xi’s purged father, experts say.
“It’s entirely possible that Xi himself feels a certain debt on behalf of his father toward Hu,” says Carl Minzner, senior fellow in China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
