Hu Yaobang: A Chinese Biography (review)

BOOK REVIEWS: Mark Engman, editor Ali, R., ed., Third World at the Crossroads ........................ 205 Carvounis, CC. and B.Z., U.S. Commercial Opportunities in the Soviet Union ........................................... 189 Flanagan, S.J., NATO's Conventional Defenses ..................... 207 Gianaris, N.V., Greece and Turkey: Economic and Geopolitical Perspectives ....................................... 198 Haftendorn and Schissler, eds., The Reagan Administration: A Reconstruction of American Strength? ......................... 194 Hamilton, E. K., ed., American's Global Interests: A New Agenda .............................................. 197 Hanrieder, W., Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy ........................... 195 Huth, P.K., Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War ......... 200 Mattox and Vaughan, eds., Germany through American Eyes: Foreign Policy and Domestic Issues .............................. 185 McGhee, George, At the Creation of a New Germany: From Adenauer to Brandt—An Ambassador's Account ............ 183 Melendez, E., Puerto Rico's Statehood Movement ................... 201 Perdue, W. D., Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear ......................... 191 Schlesinger, J., America at the Century's End ....................... 203 Seaborg, G.T., Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the fohnson Years .......................................... 187 Seale, P., Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East ........... 181 Yang, Zhongmei, Hu Yaobang: A Chinese Biography ................ 180 179 180 SAIS REVIEW Hu Yaobang: A Chinese Biography. By Yang Zhongmei. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 1988. 208 pp. $35.00/cloth. Reviewed by Carla P. Freeman, M. A. Candidate, SAIS. The death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, catalyzed a series of student-led demonstrations, starting in Beijing and spreading to other major Chinese cities, that inspired the world and shook the Chinese Communist government with their intensity. The iron-fisted June 4 crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square was a tragic rebuff to the aspirations of millions of Chinese citizens and signaled an abrupt end to the decade of reforms which had formed the centerpiece of Deng Xiaoping's 1979 "Open Door" policy. While many Americans are familiar with scenes of the jubilant demonstrations and subsequent repressions beamed via satellite, few are familiar with Hu Yaobang, former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and a veteran of China's revolutionary Long March. Who was this man whose death moved many Chinese citizens to press so bravely for political reforms and who has become a symbol of one of China's most progressive eras? Yang Zhongmei, a Chinese scholar now living in Japan, provides an important resource for answering these questions and for determining Hu's significance to China's latest upheaval with his biography of the former leader. Thanks to an excellent English translation by William A. Wycoff, this unprecedented independent study by a PRC citizen of a contemporary Chinese leader presents a wealth of information about Hu's life and work. It is laboriously documented with references to sources generally inaccessible to scholars outside of China, including internal Communist Party documents as well as interviews with Hu's friends and relatives. Not surprisingly, Yang's exhaustive research reveals inconsistencies in the official record of Hu's life. Yang Zhongmei traces Hu Yaobang's long career from Communist Youth League membership in the 1930s through his rise to party general secretary in 1980 and eventual ouster in 1987. As such, Yang's biographical account is also a political history of the People's Republic of China. Yang also notes that Hu lacked the dignity and self-control some Chinese expect from their statesman ; he was once described as "Deng Xiaoping at 45 rpm." But on the whole, Yang steers away from delving into Hu's personality or leadership abilities. When Yang started his book in 1982, he was writing about the current leader of the world's largest Communist party. But with Hu's forced resignation as general secretary in 1987, Yang found himself writing quite a different story. In Yang's view, Hu's demotion through a Dengist "coup d'etat" was the result of his commitment to a broadened program of political as well as economic reform in China. The more immediate cause of Hu's ouster, however, was his association with the student movement in December 1986. Hu's dedication to political liberalization emerges as an overarching theme throughout his career. In the 1950s, when Chairman Mao advocated singleminded...