The man who questioned Mao: Hu Yaobang's colleagues look back
Hu Yaobang, the liberal leader whose death sparked the Tiananmen Square protests, encouraged the public to reassess Maoist dogma
After the communist regime seized control of China in 1949, the government's various political campaigns purged tens of millions of people through executions, prison terms and so-called re-education efforts. The greatest achievement of Hu Yaobang - the country's liberal leader whose death sparked the massive Tiananmen protests of 1989 - was to clear millions of political victims of false charges, and to free the country from the strictures of Maoist dogma, say Hu's former staff members and party colleagues.
"Hu Yaobang launched the campaign to vindicate people who were wrongly accused. Without him, I doubt whether it could have taken place at all," said He Fang, 91, a former senior official at the foreign ministry.
Hu ... launched the campaign to vindicate people who were wrongly accused
Once the party's top leader as general secretary, Hu prodded officials to make governing more transparent and to loosen economic controls. His forced resignation in 1987 and death two years later sparked an immediate outcry from students hungry for democracy and furious with the party's corruption.
Twenty five years later, his former staff and colleagues have a renewed appreciation for Hu's work.
In the Anti-Rightist Movement that began in 1957, hundreds of thousands of intellectuals - many of them critical of Mao Zedong - were sent to re-education camps where hard labour would supposedly reform their minds. Next, during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, millions of Chinese were beaten, tortured and executed by the government.
