Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang, the second most powerful man in China, resigned Friday after accepting blame for pro-democracy demonstrations by students that have created an ominous conservative backlash against the country`s reforms.
Hu, 71, was replaced by Premier Zhao Ziyang, who becomes acting general secretary of the world`s largest Communist Party and apparently retains his government post for the time being.
The official New China news agency said Hu`s resignation was accepted by a special, enlarged session of the party Politburo, China`s top decision-making body. The news agency said Zhao was unanimously chosen to replace Hu and the party Central Committee would be asked to approve both moves.
The party communique on the moves failed to mention whether Zhao would be replaced as premier. That probably was because the premiership is a government position, technically outside the party`s direct control.
Unconfirmed reports indicated that Vice Premier Li Peng would replace Zhao as premier.
Hu`s ouster and Zhao`s promotion were announced on nationwide television by a young commentator wearing a pale gray Mao suit. That seemed significant because the baggy, high-collared tunic is the unofficial uniform of conservative party members, while reform-minded party members tend to wear Western suits.
Normally, the news commentator wears a Western suit. He had worn a jacket and tie every evening recently, including the night before the announcement.
Also of apparent significance was the fact that the first line of the communique announcing Hu`s resignation mentioned he had made a ”self-criticism of his mistakes on major issues of political principles.”
Self-criticisms were favorite tools of humiliation for the Red Guards who dominated China during the chaotic Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
”Participants in the meeting gave Comrade Hu Yaobang a serious and comradely criticism and at the same time acknowledged his achievements in work as they were,” the communique said.
Hu, a veteran of the Long March that helped bring the Communists to power, was allowed to keep his important seats on the Politburo and the Politburo`s Standing Committee. The five-member Standing Committee has final say on all party matters.
Technically Hu has seniority on the Standing Committee over Deng Xiaoping, but Deng unquestionably is China`s paramount leader.
Rumors had circulated around Peking for days that Hu was about to be ousted for his handling, or mishandling, of the recent student protests, which have helped create a conservative backlash against Deng`s longterm reforms.
Hu had not been seen in public since Dec. 29, just before the month-long protests peaked, and sources said Deng had castigated the party boss for the demonstrations.
Hu and Zhao, 67, are strong supporters of Deng`s reforms.
Until now, however, Zhao has been involved mainly in economic reforms. Those reforms have been far more successful than the abbreviated attempt at political and ideological reforms, which seem to have overcome Hu.
Conservatives saw even the most minor political reforms as a threat to Communist Party rule and that impression was only fostered by last month`s demonstrations, in which students chanted and carried placards demanding some vague form of ”democracy and freedom.”
Since those demonstrations, state-run media have been deluged with editorials, speeches, articles and edicts railing against the rise of
”bourgeois liberalization,” a term used to describe antiparty and antisocialist attitudes.
Deng seems to have launched the bourgeois liberalization campaign and clearly was behind Hu`s ouster.
For the last seven years, Hu has been considered the likely successor to Deng, 82. The two men were on the Long March in 1934-35, and both were banished to the countryside by party radicals during Mao Tse-tung`s Cultural Revolution.
Diplomats, however, said Hu would have had trouble winning the allegiance of the military if he ever came to power.
In addition, he was perceived by most foreigners and many Chinese as an almost comic figure. He had an unnerving habit of saying the wrong thing so often that people often talk about ”shoot-from-the-li p Hu.”
Twice within two weeks in April, 1985, he spouted ”Huisms” that embarrassed his country and nearly caused international incidents.
On the eve of a rare trip abroad to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Hu gave a news conference at which a reporter questioned him about the ”three obstacles” standing in the way of renewed ties between China and the Soviet Union. The three obstacles are Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Soviet troops on the Chinese border and Soviet support for Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. They are raised so often that even Chinese
schoolchildren know them.
But when he was asked, Hu said: ”I can`t remember clearly what these obstacles are.”
Because of his stature as the No. 2 man in China, reporters and diplomats at first interpreted his remarks as an indication the Chinese were softening their stand on the three obstacles. That wasn`t the case, and three days later Deng had to make a public statement clearing up the mess.
Later that month, another slip of the lip by Hu led to the postponement of what was to have been the first port call by U.S. warships to China since 1949.
He told reporters that Washington had assured China the ships were all carrying conventional weapons. That was significant because at the time the U.S. and New Zealand were feuding over New Zealand`s refusal to admit U.S. warships unless it was sure they weren`t carrying nuclear weapons.
The U.S. refuses to disclose whether its ships are nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed and had done the same thing with Hu. But another Hu slip of the lip caused problems.
What Hu meant to tell reporters was that the U.S. had told him the ships would be conventional naval vessels, not that they were carrying conventional weapons or that they were conventionally powered.
”Hu`s just a good ol` country bumpkin,” a Peking diplomat said in 1985.
