Hu Yaobang (1915-1989) was considered the most
reform-minded member of the post-Mao leadership. Nothing was sacred to
him: he once suggested that the Chinese refrain from eating with
chopsticks to avoid the spreading of disease; and he considered none of
Mao's thoughts applicable to China's efforts to modernize. Such
startling statements did not endear him to his more conservative
colleagues.
After running away from home at the age of 14, he
joined the Communist Party. Hu was one of the youngest participants in
the legendary Long March (1934-1935). Later he joined the Army, where he served as a political officer under Deng Xiaoping.
From that point on, his carreer was closely linked with Deng's. After
the founding of the PRC in 1949, he followed Deng to Peking, where he
became the head of the Communist Youth League. When Deng was purged in
1966, Hu shared the same fate. When Deng was restored to power in
1973-1976, Hu reappeared. The pattern was repeated in 1976-1977.
After Deng's Four Modernization policy was adopted
in 1978, Hu was named to the Politburo and made head of the
organization and propaganda departments of the party. In 1982, he
replaced Hua Guofeng
as general secretary. In January 1987, after a number of secret
meetings in which the conservatives played a major role in driving him
out, Hu was forced to accept the responsibility for students
demonstrations that took place in 1986. After his self-criticism and
resignation, he went into seclusion, although he remained a member of
the Politburo.
During a meeting of the Politburo in April 1989, Hu
had a heart attack from which he did not recover. His death sparked the
student demonstrations that ended with the Tian'anmen Incident in June
1989: according to the students, with Hu dead, there was no hope for
further (political) reforms.
The conservatives' antipathy of Hu's liberalism may
be one of the reasons that no posters featuring him were ever
published. A plan to publish a poster with Deng, Hu and Zhao Ziyang,
was quietly shelved in 1989. The poster shown on this page, donated in
1986 to the civil administration of Tianjin, is one of the only ones
known to show Hu, seated on the sofa with Deng. They are surrounded by
a number of other leaders, including Chen Yun and Li Xiannian, and various models of the time, including Zhang Haidi.
Source:
Dachang Cong, When Heroes Pass Away—The Invention of a Chinese Communist Pantheon (Lanham MD, etc.: University Press of America, 1997)
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s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
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