Does Hu Yaobang’s vision on Tibet still matter?

Hu Yaobang, who rose to prominence after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), was perhaps the most liberal leader in the history of Communist China; he served as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1982 to 1987.

In October 1987, during the first plenary session of the Central Committee, he was again elected a member of the Politburo.

Unfortunately, on April 8, 1989, Hu suffered a heart attack while attending an important meeting in Zhongnanhai. Though rushed to the hospital, a week later, Hu passed away; he was then 73 years old. Hu’s last will was to be buried simply, without extravagance, in his hometown.

During the memorial service, Hu’s widow, Li Zhao, blamed Hu’s death on how the Party had treated him; she told Deng Xiaoping, “It’s all because of you people!”

However, in his official obituary, Hu was described as “a long-tested and staunch communist warrior, a great proletarian revolutionist and statesman, an outstanding political leader for the Chinese army”.

On April 22, 50,000 students marched to Tiananmen Square to participate in Hu’s memorial service and to deliver a letter of petition to the Chinese Premier Li Peng.

Then, public mourning began at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Beijing and in many other places in China; students turned out in large numbers to pay their homage to the deceased leader.

According to Wikipedia: “The mourning became a public conduit for anger against perceived nepotism in the government, the unfair dismissal and early death of Hu, and the behind-the-scenes role of the ‘old men’, officially retired leaders who nevertheless maintained quasi-legal power.”

Deng Xiaoping was one of them.

It was the beginning of the protests which escalated into the students’ unrest on Tiananmen Square in May/June 1989. The world still remembers how less than two months later, it ended with the entry of the tanks on the Square.

Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has been lukewarm about the reformist leader, preferring to forget his legacy.

Xi Jinping Praises Hu Yaobang

To the surprise of many, on November 20, 2025, President Xi Jinping delivered a speech at the Symposium Commemorating the 110th Anniversary of Comrade Hu Yaobang’s Birth. The function did not get much coverage, but Xi praised the former General Secretary: “Comrade Hu Yaobang was an outstanding leader who held important leadership positions in the Party for a long period. He made immortal contributions to national independence and liberation, socialist revolution and construction, reform and opening up, and socialist modernisation.”

The Chinese president went on to describe the extraordinary life of Hu Yaobang.

How should this be read in the present power struggle to replace Xi at the helm? It is difficult to answer.

In his speech, Xi noted, “From June 1981 to January 1987, [Hu] served as Chairman and General Secretary of the Central Committee. From a ‘Red Little Devil’ in the Soviet Area to a leader of the Party, from a revolutionary fighter charging into battle to a pioneer of reform and opening up, no matter what position he held, he always maintained a selfless dedication and indomitable revolutionary enthusiasm, tirelessly contributing everything to the cause of the Party and the people. Comrade Hu Yaobang’s life was a glorious life, a fighting life, and a life of dedication.”

Is the present leadership planning to follow in the footsteps of Hu Yaobang? Probably not, but only the future will tell us with certainty.

To conclude, Xi praised “his spirit of seeking truth from facts and pioneering new paths; his excellent qualities of being pragmatic, responsible, and courageous; and his lofty demeanour of being fair, upright, and self-disciplined”.

Xi openly exhorted the Party: “He is forever worthy of our emulation.”

Though the present leadership is paying lip service to the values promoted by the old liberal leader, it has forgotten some of his remarkable deeds.

A Visit to Tibet

In this context, it is interesting to remember Hu Yaobang’s visit to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, from May 22 to May 31, 1980; Hu Yaobang was leading an inspection tour by a Working Group of the Party Central Committee.

The Working Group was composed of five senior leaders: Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee; Wan Li, Vice-Premier of the State Council; Ngapo Ngawang Jigme, a Tibetan who was serving as Vice-Chairman of the National People’s Congress; Yang Jingren, the Head of the State Commission of Nationalities Affairs; and Zhao Zhengqing, Vice-Minister of the Party’s Organisation Department.

During a speech, Hu told the Party cadres that the Tibetans should “exercise nationality autonomy in the region fully – that is to say, to let Tibetans really be the masters of their own lives”.

This was not far from the ‘genuine autonomy’ asked today by the Dalai Lama.

Wang Yao, an assistant to the Chinese leader, later wrote a report: “An Important Development in the Chinese Government’s Tibet Policy.”

Yao quoted Edgar Snow, an ‘old friend’ of the Party leadership, who once said, “Nothing carried out in public by the leaders of the Central Committee is ever casual or without significance.”

Indeed, Hu’s visit was then supported by the Party.

Yao also noted, “This event was watched with great interest by those, both at home and abroad, who were concerned with Tibetan society, and it can be said that this event marked the beginning of a new era for the PCC’s Tibet policy.”

According to Hu’s assistant, during a party meeting organised to celebrate the 1951 Agreement, Hu gave a powerful political speech to some 5,000 cadres in Lhasa. The motto was ‘Strive to build a united, prosperous and civilised new Tibet’.

In the speech, Hu listed a few tasks for Tibet; he frankly admitted, “Our present situation is less than wonderful because the Tibetan people’s lives have not been much improved. There are some improvements in some parts, but in general, Tibetans still live in relative poverty. In some areas the living standards have even gone down. We comrades, in the Central Committee, Chairman Hua [Guofeng] as well as several vice-chairmen, were very upset when we heard about this situation. We feel that our party has let the Tibetan people down. We feel very bad! The sole purpose of our Communist Party is to work for the happiness of people, to do good things for them. We have worked nearly thirty years, but the life of the Tibetan people has not been notably improved. Are we not to blame? If we don’t make this clear, people won’t let us off the hook; party members won’t let us get away with it!”

Wang Yao later wrote, “He was open and honest, dared to act, dared to face reality and dared [to] bear responsibility.”

Never had a senior Communist leader been so open and honest.

It was probably the first and the last time that a senior leader accepted the Communist Party’s mistakes in Tibet and tried to remedy them.

In the years that followed, Yao believed that the visit indisputably brought “an open door, a revitalised economy, changes in the social structure and an improvement in people’s lives”.

The very date of the visit tends to indicate that the Central Government’s policy on Tibet was based on the ‘Seventeen-Point Agreement’ signed in Beijing on May 23, 1951.

Though the Dalai Lama considered that the agreement was signed under duress, it was far better in terms of the autonomy granted to the Tibetans than the situation before Hu Yaobang’s visit …or today.

Hu’s Speech

In his speech on May 29, Hu put forward the slogan: ‘Strive to build a united, prosperous and civilised new Tibet’. He listed some tasks for the cadres posted on the ‘roof of the world’: “[Tibet should] exercise nationality autonomy in the region fully – that is to say, to let Tibetans really be the masters of their own lives,” and he pledged, “A commitment by the Central Government to relieve and reduce burdens of the people.”

For Yao the visit and Hu’s speech indicated that “the Central Government was willing to settle matters through consultation with the local people. …and the Central Government’s wish to restore the harmonious atmosphere of cooperation which had prevailed in the early 1950s”.

It would never really be done. After the Tiananmen Square events of 1989, there was a hardening of Beijing’s policies, with the arrival of leaders like Hu Jintao on the scene.

So what does the recent speech of Xi Jinping mean?

One can doubt that it will herald a new Tibet or Xinjiang policy, as Beijing seems to have decided for the total sinicisation of its restive provinces, but it indicates that Hu’s vision has not been fully buried.

(The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (Delhi). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)