The reformist general secretary who rehabilitated the Cultural Revolution’s victims and freed thought; his death sparked the 1989 protests
He died on 15 April 1989, days after a heart attack; a day later unofficial mourners demanded the state reassess him, and within a week about 100,000 students marched on Tiananmen Square.
From Hunan, he joined the Red Army at fourteen, marched on the Long March and led the Communist Youth League after 1949. Persecuted in the Cultural Revolution, as head of the Organisation Department from 1977 he reviewed and reversed millions of unjust cases and in 1978 organised the “criterion of truth” debate that underpinned Deng Xiaoping’s return. Party chairman in 1981 and general secretary from 1982, he drove reform and opening, but after the student protests of late 1986 he was forced to resign in January 1987 for laxity toward “bourgeois liberalisation”. He died of a heart attack on 15 April 1989, and the mourning gatherings grew into the Tiananmen protests.
Career Timeline
- 1977–1978Head of the Central Organisation Department
- 1981–1982Chairman of the Central Committee
- 1982–1987General Secretary of the Central Committee
Related historical events
- 1976–1992Reform and opening: the Deng Xiaoping eraGeneral secretary of rehabilitation and the emancipation of thoughtOrganised the criterion-of-truth debate; resigned in 1987 over “bourgeois liberalisation”.
- 1989The Tiananmen protests and the crackdown of 4 June 1989Whose death sparked the protestsDied on 15 April; the mourning became the movement.