'Jiabao, I give you a task. Go into the villages outside the city and do investigation and research. Remember, you must stay away from the local government.'
It could have been a news editor briefing a journalist covering a story in a village in China - but this was Hu Yaobang, then general secretary of the Communist Party, briefing one of his assistants - and now premier - Wen Jiabao, during a tour of the southwest province of Guizhou.
Wen told the anecdote as part of a flood of memoirs of the man who led the party from 1982 until January 1987, when Deng Xiaoping forced him to resign. Public mourning after his death of a heart attack on April 15, 1989 led to weeks of student-led protest that resulted in the military crackdown on June 4.
The most important document is Why China should reform - Remembering my father Hu Yaobang, written by his son Hu Deping, a historian. It was published last month by the People's Publishing House in Beijing.
Hu Deping wants to leave an account of his father's life and put him on the right side of history.
'He hoped that every Chinese could enjoy the freedoms allowed to him under the constitution,' Hu Deping said. 'He spoke of freedom of speech and rule of law. He said that the law should enable people to see who is being protected and that, in normal times, private rights should not be infringed. He rarely spoke about proletarian dictatorship and talked constantly of democracy and the rule of law.'
But speaking at the National People's Congress on March 10 was another voice. Wu Bangguo, chairman of its standing committee, said that the party would retain its monopoly on power, would not allow opposition parties, a separation of powers or a federal system. With a change in the system, the state could sink into the abyss of internal disorder, Wu said.
