The Conscience of the Party: A definitive biography of Hu Yaobang

The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer

Author: Robert L Suettinger

Publisher: Harvard

Pages:  480

Price: ₹4,121

  Robert Suettinger has written a definitive biography of one of China’s important reformist leaders, Hu Yaobang, whose role has been overshadowed by the much greater attention scholars have paid to the contribution of the more senior Deng Xiaoping. Deng is credited with implementing the path-breaking economic reforms and liberalisation policies in China in the decade of the 1980s. Mr Suettinger documents in some detail how Hu Yaobang, as chairman and later general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), between 1981 and 1987, promoted the household contract responsibility system in agriculture, restoring farming on individual plots and sale of produce beyond the quota set by the state in the open market. This marked the end of the commune system imposed by Mao Zedong that had led to rural distress and stagnant grain production. This was followed by the promotion of the village and township enterprise system and informal local markets, which sowed the seeds of the dynamic private sector economy that powered China’s later and rapid economic transformation.

 

 

More importantly, the author profiles Hu as a political reformer, who led the way to distancing the CPC from government and the military, enabling their professionalisation after years of favouring “red over expert”. As head of the party, Hu not only led the campaign to rehabilitate scores of veteran party cadres who had fallen victim to the violent purges perpetrated by Mao during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but also the many intellectuals, academics and professionals who had been purged during earlier mass political  campaigns. These rehabilitated cadres and professionals became the human resource base for the country’s modernisation drive. Within the party, Hu sought to dispense with life-time tenures of senior leadership, urging veteran cadres to retire and make way for younger leaders. It is this stance that alienated veteran cadres, including many of those rehabilitated, thanks to Hu’s efforts. Deng Xiaoping was able to engineer his removal from party leadership by mobilising the geriatric but still influential party leaders.

 

According to the author, Hu Yaobang’s break with the senior party leadership came after he showed sympathy for the student demonstrations that erupted in December 1986, targeting corruption in the party, protesting high rates of inflation and urging democratic reforms. The more conservative party leaders, including Deng, faulted Hu for not having taken strong, repressive action against the student demonstrations. Hu was dismissed from office in 1987 though he retained his Politburo position. He died in April 1989.

 

In death, Hu  became something of a hero to China’s youth and public mourning for him became the trigger for the much larger student demonstrations that took place at the historic Tiananmen Square in April 1989 that led inexorably to their brutal and bloody repression on June 4, 1989. China’s economic reforms would be temporarily rolled back as they were seen by some veteran party leaders as the reason for the opposition to the party’s centralised and undisputed authority. It was only in 1992 that Deng Xiaoping undertook his much publicised “southern tour” to validate the economic reforms, in particular, the setting up of special economic zones and the promotion of foreign investment. It is this late turnaround that burnished Deng’s reputation as China’s champion reformer and Hu’s contributions receded into the background. Mr Suettinger’s book puts this important period in contemporary Chinese history into a more balanced perspective.

 

The book documents Hu’s more accommodating policies towards ethnic minorities, who had suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution. I had occasion to visit both Xinjiang and Tibet during the 1983-86 period and personally witnessed the more liberal policies in place, including on religious, linguistic and cultural practices. These began to be reversed in later years.

 

On foreign policy, the author points out that Hu initiated a shift away from a virtual alliance with the US towards a more centrist stance, taking measures to improve relations with the then Soviet Union and emphasising China’s Third World credentials. This aspect of Hu’s leadership is not well known, but I do recall that our embassy reporting at the time had noted these shifts.

 

Mr Suettinger had studied China as a CIA analyst for several years and brings a rigorous analytical approach to this very detailed biography. He has drawn from a vast array of original Chinese language sources and covered Hu’s life and legacy in considerable detail. If there is a downside to this book, it is that it has too much detail. We get a potted history of the CPC through this narrative of the life and times of Hu. The focus on his role as a party leader and the significance of his efforts towards creating a more democratic, more responsive party are somewhat lost in the details. Nevertheless, this is a timely corrective to the inordinate and often adulatory depiction of Deng Xiaoping’s role as the wise, pragmatic and decisive reformist  leader to the exclusion of the important role played by others and is, therefore, welcome.

 

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The reviewer is a former Foreign Secretary