Hu Dehua, the third son of former General Secretary Hu Yaobang, died in Beijing on March 30. The anniversary of his father’s death in 1989, which sparked the protests crushed by the June 4 crackdown, is April 15. That historical context, as well as Hu Dehua’s own vocal defense of his father’s legacy and criticism of Xi Jinping, imbued the younger Hu’s death with heightened political sensitivity. Accordingly, many posts about him and his father have been censored, including tributes on WeChat and even obituaries at NetEase, Sohu, Phoenix.com, and Tencent. Some online comments drew parallels with the similar suppression of mourning for former Premier Li Keqiang after his death in 2023, lamenting: “Last year [sic] it was Li Keqiang, this year it’s Hu Dehua.”
Hu Yaobang remained a taboo topic for many years after Tiananmen, albeit with some degree of rehabilitation under Xi Jinping. Hu Dehua was an outspoken advocate for his father’s cause of reform. He criticized Xi Jinping’s analysis of the fall of the U.S.S.R. and its causes in a speech in 2013; in an interview with South China Morning Post the following year, he lamented the stalling of reform in China and the lack of constitutionally guaranteed rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. In an earlier video, Hu Dehua contrasted his father with Deng Xiaoping, saying: “one cared about saving the people and the other cared about saving the Party … Hu Yaobang believed people should always have a place to speak, that the freedom and power to speak were necessary. But Old Deng only permitted people to say the Party was good.” Later, Hu Dehua was a senior figure at the liberal Party journal Yanhuang Chunqiu prior to its aggressive overhaul in 2016.
One deleted post marking Hu Dehua’s death was the following reflection from the WeChat public account 闻道不分朝夕—an earlier tribute to the late General Secretary republished on April 1 with a brief foreword noting that “we know that commemoration of Hu Dehua is actually rooted in gratitude to Hu Yaobang.”
I’ll often kill time by chatting with friends.
There are many topics of conversation, of course—we cover everything under the sun. But they always seem to involve anecdotes about notable people. I once asked a friend: Do you still remember Yaobang? To my surprise, he replied, “Who’s Yaobang?”
I was struck speechless, unsure how to respond. But on reflection, it’s not so strange—there can’t be many youngsters born in the 90s and after who remember him.
History marches on.
But there are some people, and some things, that will always be remembered by someone or other. Hu Yaobang made two groundbreaking contributions to China’s reform: discussion of standards of truth, and rehabilitation of the falsely accused. What later generations remember him for is liberating minds, on one hand, and liberating people, on the other. And it was those whose bodies and minds that were liberated that went on to become the driving force of reform.
Of course, he didn’t accomplish this on his own, but it’s undeniable that he fought the hardest, risked the most, and showed the most courage, insight, and resolve.
[…] By an incomplete count, more than three million wrongfully convicted cadres were rehabilitated across the country between 1978 and 1982; more than 470,000 people had their Party membership restored; and tens of millions of cadres and others who had been baselessly implicated were exonerated.Restoring order and justice on this scale, and bringing about historical reconciliation across the whole breadth of society, allowed for the almost complete reconstruction of the nation’s social foundation. This momentum, this atmosphere, was the spring thaw that melted the snow and ice that had been piling up since 1949.
Given these astonishing figures, there were some who wondered whether Hu Yaobang had rehabilitated too many. Hu’s immediate retort was: Why did no one ask if there were too many when people were seized in the first place?
The late Dai Huang, a former senior correspondent at Xinhua, wrote:
In 1994, Du Daozheng, head of the publisher of the journal Yanhuang Chunqiu, asked me to write about Hu Yaobang. He already had a title in mind: “Hu Yaobang and the Righting of Wrongful Cases.” I agreed at once.
In November of the following year, to mark what would have been Hu Yaobang’s 80th birthday, Yanhuang Chunqiu published an excerpt from what I had written, which was then republished by dozens of newspapers including Southern Weekend.
But getting the book published proved to be difficult. The initial publishing contract was with the People’s Press. They had nearly finished editing the manuscript when they decided to unilaterally break off the contract. Later I was approached by the head of the Central Party School Press and one of his editors, so I gave them the manuscript. They edited the whole manuscript of several hundred thousand characters in just three days, but then the head of the press told me they couldn’t publish it right away, and that I should leave the manuscript in their hands while we waited it out. Worried that it might be a very long wait, I went back to the Central Party School Press and managed to get the manuscript back, although they were reluctant to part with it. [Chinese]
Another deleted post was the following one posted on April 4 by Wang Mingyuan on his WeChat public account Fuchengmen No. 6 Courtyard. This focuses more on Hu Dehua himself, and on the author’s personal relationship with him:
On the whole, Mr. Hu Dehua finally began to take some time for himself in the last few years, concentrating his energies on examining the evolution of his father’s thinking, and reflecting on a number of historical issues. He had two main focal points: first, how Hu Yaobang gradually diverged from revolutionary orthodoxy, and secondly, why he drifted apart from Deng Xiaoping on questions of reform. Much of Hu’s analysis is informed by his unique perspective.
Mr. Hu Dehua would often say: “When Deng Xiaoping visited the United States in 1979, he said that those who aligned with the U.S. became richer, but I actually think the flipside of that is also very important: that is, that those who aligned with the U.S.S.R. all became poorer. Why they become poorer is a question well worth asking, but this sort of introspection is rare.”
[…] Mr. Hu Dehua described his father as very upright and inimicably opposed to wrongdoing, never the bearer of grudges, and always inclined to treat others well. He was kind to his personal staff and his subordinates on the Communist Youth League Central Committee, concerning himself not only with their work but also their lives outside it, even though they had denounced him during the Cultural Revolution. Many of his close comrades-in-arms had also turned on him, but afterwards, Hu Yaobang chose to forgive them. At times, his children would anxiously warn him: “Father, don’t you know he’s one of the bad ones? He did so much to hurt you behind your back—how can you be so good to him?” Hu Yaobang would say, with a little smile: “How could I not remember that? But if everyone keeps seeking revenge, when will it end?” [Hu] Deping [Hu Yaobang’s eldest son] and Dehua both said that their father was extremely well versed in political machinations and trickery, but never used them himself. When he became General Secretary, he had said: “If you play Liu Bang [Emperor Han Gaozu], and I play Cao Cao [a key figure in the later dissolution of the Han Dynasty into the Three Kingdoms period], then our China will never move forward. We must practice what we preach, and drive forward rules for civilized politics.”Mr. Hu Dehua inherited his father’s sincerity, candor, and decency. Tao Siliang once said, “Uncle Yaobang’s forthright character made countless people like and feel close to him. His magnanimity and sincerity were his two most outstanding traits.” The same could be said of Dehua. He never discriminated by class, and was invariably respectful toward people like waiters, drivers, and guards. He’d never refuse a request for his phone number or WeChat contact.
[…] Mr. Hu Dehua lived very modestly—previously with his mother in a courtyard house on Beichang Street. He’d usually only eat out with friends at places like Zeyuan restaurant—a restaurant for ordinary people set up by Mao Zedong’s chef Cheng Ruming after he retired—ordering simple dishes like corn porridge, scallion pancakes, or soy-braised pork. Whenever I went to see him after he moved to Tianshui Yuan, we’d usually go to Qingfeng Steamed Buns[where Xi Jinping famously acquired his "Steamed Bun" nickname] or McDonalds. He’d enthusiastically put away a 15-yuan plate of six steamed buns dipped in vinegar—which of the other diners would have guessed that his father once led the Chinese Communist Party?! As far as I can recall, the best meal we ever had together was a “luxury banquet” at Huishang Guli for about a thousand yuan[$135]. [Chinese]
Wang also writes of Hu Dehua that: “In business, he kept his hands clean, never colluding with officials or profiting from the national interest, and always relying on his own abilities to get by. As a result, he never made a great fortune.“ The modesty of Hu’s later life may be somewhat overstated in this account: he complained in 2013 that his luxury Beijing villa complex and real estate development company had been targeted by a small army of thugs hired by a rival; and he was named in the 2016 Panama Papers as a shareholder, director, and beneficial owner of an investment vehicle in the British Virgin Islands. Hu subsequently told South China Morning Post that the offshore company was the dormant remnant of an unsuccessful stock exchange listing in Hong Kong. His public comment was itself unusual: asked why other prominent Chinese figures named in the leaks had declined to comment, he said: “This is my style of doing things – a habit I’ve formed over all these the years. But I can’t demand everyone to be like me.”
A third apparent target of censorship is a lengthy account by Hu Dehua himself, recounting his father’s ordeals during the Cultural Revolution, the grace with which he bore them, and the developing relationship between father and son who had been estranged for many years. The piece remains online elsewhere, but reposts following Hu Dehua’s death have reportedly been removed from WeChat. The text both begins and ends with Hu Yaobang’s admonition to his son after the young Hu Dehua suggested that his father endorse false accusations against others in exchange for softer treatment:
“Every word I say must stand up to history’s judgment. In the end, one can only stand up to historical scrutiny by seeking truth from facts. I cannot talk rubbish in exchange for a lighter beating or lesser hardship, and have future generations point at me and say I was spineless. I can’t do it, and I don’t believe our Party will be that way either. I don’t know who wrote those big-character posters [accusing others], but I absolutely believe that in the end, our Party will not be like that, that in the end it will seek truth from facts ….” [Chinese]
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