Xu Jiatun

Xu Jiatun ( Chinese  許 家屯  /  许 家屯 , Pinyin Xǔ Jiātún , born March 10, 1916 in Rugao ; † June 29, 2016 in Los Angeles ) was a high-ranking politician of the People's Republic of China and later a dissident. He was the first secretary of the Jiangsu Province Communist Party Committee from 1977 to 1983 . From 1983 to 1990 he represented the People's Republic of China as the unofficial ambassador to Hong Kong in order to prepare the transfer of the crown colony to China. He fled to the United States in 1990 after the violent crackdown on the Tian'anmen Square protests and his retirement.

In the early 1980s, the Chinese party and state leadership began to think about the future of Hong Kong as part of the People's Republic of China. Deng Xiaoping , who effectively led the People's Republic at the time, realized that Beijing had to send a high-ranking person to Hong Kong in order to establish contact with influential Hong Kongers and to inform the top management level of the CP directly about the peculiarities of the colony. In addition, he was supposed to build up staff for the time after the city was returned to the People's Republic. Deng chose Xu for this position because he had already played an important role in the economic consolidation process in Nanjing and later in the entire Jiangsu Province at the end of the Cultural Revolution . In his function as governor and party secretary of Jiangsu, he advocated the development of free markets, which, as part of the four modernizations at the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy, contributed to the doubling of the province's gross domestic product from 1976 to 1983.

Deng visited Xu during the Chinese New Year celebrations in 1983. As early as April 1983, he was informed that he would be given responsibility for all relations between the People's Republic and Hong Kong and that he would be permanently resident in Hong Kong. As of June 30, 1983, he was appointed secretary of the Hong Kong-Macau Working Group of the Communist Party and became a member of the 11th and 12th Central Committees of the Chinese Communist Party . Former Foreign Minister Ji Pengfei was appointed for the daily work regarding the return of Macau and Hong Kong in Beijing, while Zhao Ziyang and Li Xiannian were responsible for politics .

Xu officially took the post of head of the Hong Kong branch of the Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong . His appointment showed that Beijing had made the surrender of Hong Kong a matter of national importance, as Xu had been the highest-ranking representative from Beijing to date. He had to build an organization out of the Hong Kong communists, whose skills at the time were no more than repeating slogans and criticizing the government and the economy, which could administer Hong Kong after the return. To achieve these goals, Xu set up a working group headed by Yang Zhenhan (brother of Nobel Prize winner Chen Ning Yang ), brought members of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to Hong Kong and arranged high-level contacts between Hong Kong and mainland China . He quadrupled the staff of Xinhua Hong Kong; Working groups have been set up to understand Hong Kong institutions. With his openness he managed to win the trust of the Hong Kong people. He assured them that there was no need to worry about the time after the colony was returned. Xu also had the courage to share the real sentiment of Hong Kong residents towards Beijing. While the communists of Hong Kong and also business people had always reported to Beijing what they meant what they wanted to hear there - that is, that the residents of the city were waiting for the liberation by the motherland, the party leadership in Beijing got to hear from Xu, that Hong Kongers distrusted the CP, that it was doomed, that it respected the UK administration and the rule of law, and that there were doubts as to whether Beijing could provide the right leadership for Hong Kong.

After signing the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong , Xu selected the 23 Hong Kong representatives who would be involved in drafting the Hong Kong Basic Law . To build trust, he elected representatives from all walks of life. He himself was vice chairman of the committee to draft the basic law.

Just a few months after the Basic Law was passed, the protests in Tian'anmen Square in Beijing were violently ended . This led to the largest demonstrations in the history of the city in Hong Kong; of the five million inhabitants at the time, one million took part in the protests. Xu did nothing against Xinhua employees who participated in the demonstrations. He defended Hong Kong's criticism of the Beijing state and party leadership and tacitly allowed the events to be reported in the city's media.

In January 1990, Xu was relieved of his functions and replaced by Zhou Nan . On the one hand, Xu was 70 years old at the time; on the other hand, he had worked closely with Zhao Ziyang, who was under house arrest after the protests , and showed sympathy for the demonstrators. He fled to the US after a disciplinary investigation was opened against him. Xu was later expelled from the Communist Party. His wish to return to China in old age was not fulfilled. He died in Los Angeles in 2016 at the age of 100.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Xu Jiatun dies in exile, aged 100. Radio Television Hong Kong , June 29, 2016, accessed April 10, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel : Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, ISBN 978-0-674-05544-5 , pp. 498 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, pp. 499 f .
4. ↑ Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, pp. 506 .
5. ^ ^{A b} Ezra F. Vogel: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China . Harvard University Pess, 2011, pp. 508 f .

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Xu is the family name here, Jiatun is the first name.