Yan Mingfu

Yan Mingfu (simplified Chinese: 阎明复; pinyin: Yán Míngfù; born 1931) is a retired politician who has served in a number of government positions in the People’s Republic of China. His first prominent role in government began in 1985, when he was made leader of the United Front Work Department for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He held the position until the CCP expelled him for inadequately following the party line in his dialogues with students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Yan returned to government work in 1991 when he became a vice minister of Civil Affairs.

Yan was born in Liaoning province in 1931. In 1949, he graduated from the Harbin Foreign Language College. He then became the official Russian translator for Mao Zedong, before being promoted to a high-ranking party position sometime in the late 1950s. During the Cultural Revolution he was arrested and did not reappear in a state position until 1985. His father, Yan Baohang, had been a member of both the Kuomintang and the CCP. Before Yan Mingfu was appointed head of the United Front Work Department in 1985, his father had held the position from the department’s inception during the Chinese Civil War. When students began protesting China’s corruption and economic problems after the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, Yan was also serving as a Secretary in the 13th Politburo of the Communist Party of China.

From the beginning of the protests at Tiananmen Square, the Politburo’s members had been working towards finding a resolution that would pacify the students. Some officials favored engaging with their demands, but others, such as Li Peng, felt that most pressing issue was to “get students back into their classrooms” before the situation escalated. At a meeting held on May 10, the Politburo, under the leadership of Zhao Ziyang, decided that holding discussions with every group involved in the protests would be an ideal path to resolving the students’ issues; along with Hu Qili and Rui Xingwen, Yan was asked to speak to journalists from various papers throughout the capital. According to Zhang Liang, the compiler of the document collection The Tiananmen Papers, the three officials saw in the protests “an opportunity to move decisively toward fuller, more truthful reporting.” Yan held his dialogue with Beijing’s journalists from May 11 to May 13; throughout these discussions, he repeatedly voiced his support for the students’ goals, downplayed the condemnation of the protest expressed in the April 26 Editorial, and maintained that Zhao was fully in favor of reforming the press.

...
Wikipedia