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China’s Communist Party
ChinaPolitics

Yan Mingfu, Chinese Communist Party negotiator with Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989, dies aged 91

  • Yan invited protest leaders to a dialogue on May 14, 1989 but failed to persuade them to stop their hunger strike
  • He was removed from his positions soon after June 4 crackdown, returned years later as vice-minister of civil affairs and continued public service into retirement

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Yan Mingfu became China’s vice-minister of civil affairs in 1991 after being removed from his positions in 1989. Photo: SCMP
William Zhengin Hong KongandJun Maiin Beijing
Yan Mingfu, a former political heavyweight of China’s ruling Communist Party best remembered for mediating between Beijing and student protesters before the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989, has died aged 91.
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Yan died in Beijing on Monday morning “due to illnesses”, according to an announcement by his family sent to their friends and seen by the South China Morning Post. They said a simple memorial ceremony would be organised to commemorate him in the coming days but did not give further details.

Yan – who was then the party’s United Front Work Department chief and secretary of the party’s decision-making Central Committee secretariat – was one of the top party representatives to reach out to liberal journalists, intellectuals and protesting students in Tiananmen Square in May 1989.

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He entered the limelight when he became the ruling party’s representative, inviting the student protest leaders, including Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi, to a dialogue at the department on May 14, 1989, after liberal intellectuals sympathetic to the students – including Yan Jiaqi, Dai Qing and Liu Xiaobo – failed to persuade them to stop their hunger strike.
On May 16, 1989, Yan was told by the then general secretary of the party, Zhao Ziyang, to go to Tiananmen Square to continue the persuasion effort after his two days of talks went nowhere.

There, Yan tried to reassure the students by saying he was willing to join the sit-in and even asked the students to hold him as “hostage”, hoping to get the students’ consent to end their hunger strike.

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But his plea to the students failed to turn the situation around and instead was used as evidence by hardliners of his failure to follow the party line. Yan was removed from his positions just a month after the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown and following the ousting of his boss Zhao Ziyang.

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