Hu Deping promoting his book, Speaking of Reform, in Haikou, Hainan province, on April 19, 2013. (Photo/CNS)
Prominent Chinese liberal Hu Deping has been placed under the media spotlight again for his recent meeting with Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and the 25th anniversary of the death of his father, late Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang.
The 71-year-old Hu Deping arrived in Tokyo on April 6 for an eight-day visit as part of efforts to smooth bilateral relations between China and Japan amid tensions over the Diaoyutai islands (Diaoyu to China, Senkaku to Japan) territorial dispute in the East China Sea. During the visit, Hu met with Abe as well as chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga, foreign minister Fumio Kishida, former prime minister Yasuo Fukuda and former legislative speaker Yohei Kono.
Diplomatic sources said Beijing and Tokyo both held high hopes that Hu's visit would help thaw chilly relations between the two countries given his close ties to Chinese president and Communist Party secretary Xi Jinping. While Hu has never held a key post within the party, both of their fathers were senior party officials, which allowed them to form a private friendship.
April 15 also marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Hu Deping's revered reformist father, Hu Yaobang, who was CPC general secretary between 1982 and 1987. Hu Yaobang's name remains a sensitive topic for Beijing as it was his purge in 1987 and death in 1989 that sparked the democracy movement and the bloody government crackdown on its student leaders in Tiananmen Square.
While his young brother Hu Dehua has been openly critical of the Chinese government for its lack of official contrition over the incident, Hu Deping has remained largely silent on the anniversary of the crackdown.
Born in November 1942 in south-central China's Hunan province, Hu Deping studied history at Peking University and spent several years in agricultural and factory labor before joining the National Museum of China in 1972, where he became deputy director. In the early 1980s, Hu studied at the Central Party School, the training center for China's political elite, where he befriended classmate and future president Hu Jintao.
Hu Deping has held several influential positions in China's private sector, including vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and secretary of the National Association of Industry and Commerce. He has also been the deputy chief of the party's United Front Work Department and a standing committee member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Hu has also been credited with helping restore archaeology as an academic discipline in the 1970s after its removal during the Cultural Revolution, and is an acknowledged expert on the 18th century Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber. He married renowned philanthropist Wang Yuying, who is 20 years his junior, in 2005 after divorcing his first wife, An Li. He has two children.
Recently, Hu was forced to deny that he had connections to a crime boss in southwestern China's Sichuan province after it was revealed that the gangster sponsored a charity linked to his wife.
