Hu Jintao's Greatest Tragedy: Raised His Enemy as Father & Dragged Out Before 2 Billion Eyes

Looking back on the century-long history of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Jintao's fate is steeped in tragedy. During the public-private partnership campaigns, his family's property was confiscated by the Communist Party. In the years of the Cultural Revolution, his father was persecuted to death, and even after his death, he was denied burial in the family cemetery. By all logic, this should have been a man who harbored a deep, blood-bound hatred toward the regime. And yet, not only did Hu Jintao never become an opponent of the system, he devoted his entire life to climbing to the very top of its power structure. At critical moments, he even acted on behalf of the regime to carry out ruthless and bloody repression. In the end, however, when he grew old, he too was coldly discarded by the very machine he had served. So why did it all turn out this way? The Cold Banquet in Taizhou, 1978. Hu Jintao's ancestors moved from Jixi County in Anhui Province to Taizhou, Jiangsu, where they ran the Huiyuan Tai Tea Shop. During the public-private partnership campaigns of the 1950s, his father, Hu Jingzhi, was forced by the Communist Party to surrender the family's assets and was reduced to a low-level employee in a supply and marketing cooperative. During the Cultural Revolution, Hu Jingzhi was targeted because of his bourgeois background. Local rebel factions falsely branded him a corrupt element, subjecting him to brutal struggle sessions, public humiliation, and imprisonment. In 1978, he died bitter and broken at the age of 59. At the time, Hu Jintao was working in Gansu as a deputy division-level cadre. He rushed back to Taizhou upon hearing the news. According to some reports, in an effort to clear his father's name, Hu gritted his teeth and spent 50 yuan, an enormous sum at the time, roughly equivalent to a university graduate's monthly salary, to host two banquet tables at the Taizhou Hotel, inviting county officials to attend. But the leaders of the Taixuan Revolutionary Committee and the supply cooperative, uncertain about the political winds of rehabilitation blowing from Beijing, feared being associated with a black bourgeois family. As a result, they collectively boycotted the banquet. Hu Jintao waited from noon until three in the afternoon. In the end, only one office director showed up out of mere formality. Humiliated and grief-stricken, Hu Jintao reportedly broke down in tears and gave all the untouched food to the hotel cooks, dishwashers, and waitstaff. This was not merely a financial loss. It was a devastating blow to the dignity of a man who was already considered a future candidate for high office. Hu Jintao's mother, Li Wenshui, had died young. After Hu Jingzhi's death, Hu Jintao even knelt before his maternal relatives, begging them to allow his parents to be buried together. But amid the ultra-leftist atmosphere of the two-whatevers era, his mother's family feared being linked to a black category household and firmly refused. Some even spoke harshly, calling the Hu family a historical burden. With no other choice, Hu Jintao buried his father in a barren wasteland several kilometers away from his mother's ancestral gravesite. This became one of the deepest pains and resentments of his life. Hu Jintao's experience reveals how, under a totalitarian system, ordinary people crushed by the Chinese Communist Party were denied not only dignity, but even the basic right to grieve. In 1978, the 36-year-old Hu Jintao returned to Taizhou to arrange his father's funeral. He spent all his savings hosting a banquet in hopes of persuading county officials to rehabilitate his father's name, only to be met with collective rejection and utter futility. That humiliation may well have marked a turning point in his life, teaching him that within this system, power alone was truth. Yet Hu Jintao did not choose the path of resistance taken by Wei Jingsheng and others of his generation at the Xidan Democracy Wall. Instead, he sealed himself off emotionally and climbed the pyramid of power. Perhaps this too was a form of Stockholm Syndrome, born from extreme fear. Reverse Elimination When Party Loyalty Overwhelms Humanity The Gunshots in Lhasa The Chinese Communist Party's system for selecting officials has been described by scholars, such as Mingzhu Cheng, as a form of reverse elimination. The more conscience and humanity a person possesses, the faster they are eliminated from the system, as happened to Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. To survive and rise within this system, one must prove that their party nature outweighs their human nature. Hu Jintao came from one of the Five Black Categories, the descendant of a business-owning family. Unlike the children of revolutionary veterans, he had no immunity medal from having a father or grandfather who had won the country for the party. As a result, he had to appear even more leftist than the true Red Cotters, more obedient and more ruthless. The crackdown in Tibet in early 1989 became, in effect, the blood-written application for membership that he submitted to the system. Faced with Tibetan protesters, a man whose own father had died from persecution during the Cultural Revolution showed no hesitation in ordering troops to open fire. At that moment, yesterday's victim became today's perpetrator. Hu used Tibetan blood to prove his loyalty to the party in the eyes of Deng Xiaoping. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping placed Hu under Jiang Zemin as his designated successor. But ten long years as crown prince, followed by another decade as general secretary, while remaining tightly constrained by Jiang's faction, profoundly distorted Hu Jintao's personality. Under the constant watch of Jiang Zemin and Zheng Qinghong, he lived every day as if walking on thin ice. He dared not hold independent views, dared not reveal personal emotions, and reportedly did not even dare return to his hometown of Taizhou for a single visit, fearing political rivals might accuse him of forming factions. When a person spends 30 years suppressing himself for the sake of power, constantly pretending, enduring, never laughing, never speaking freely, leading outsiders to nickname him the expressionless face, the person he once was has long since died. And when he finally reached the very top, he discovered that he no longer possessed the ability to destroy the system because he himself had already become part of it. His father's unjust fate before the greater interests of the party had been reduced to a speck of historical dust, something that had to remain buried in order to preserve stability. Believing in the rules of the party, only to die by mafia-like unwritten rules. The deepest tragedy of Hu Jintao may be that, although he spent his entire life being mercilessly crushed by the party system, he ultimately became a true believer in that very system. When power was transferred at the 18th Partigris, Hu attempted to use his complete retirement as a bargaining chip, hoping Xi Jinping would purge the Jiang Zemin faction that had constrained him for a decade, while also naively believing that Xi would abide by the party's internal rules Hu spent his whole life obeying the Chinese Communist Party's gang-like rules of survival, enduring humiliation and repeatedly yielding ground, believing the machine possessed some kind of contractual spirit. But he forgot that the Communist Party, at its core, is a Leninist organization with no real moral limits. After consolidating the absolute power handed over by Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping not only dismantled Jiang Zemin's faction, but also ruthlessly uprooted Hu's Communist Youth League faction without the slightest mercy. When the white-haired Hu Jintao was forcibly escorted out of the Congress Hall by security personnel after attempting to look at Xi Jinping's documents in front of cameras from around the world, the stunned expression in his eyes said everything. Li Nanying, daughter of Li Rui, former secretary to Mao Zedong, said in an interview on Eric Zhang's YouTube channel Easy Media that the issue was not whether the Party Congress documents themselves contained any great secrets. Rather, the ability to access those documents symbolized one's political status. If a senior official was no longer permitted to read them, it meant that person had become irrelevant and was no longer trusted or valued. That was why Hu Jintao appeared so alarmed when he was denied access. Earlier, when the Central Advisory Commission was dissolved and Party elders lost the privilege of reading internal documents, many reportedly reacted as though mourning a death. For the sake of this Party, Hu Jintao sacrificed his father's peace and death, sacrificed his ties to his hometown, and endured humiliation for 30 years, only to be cast out by the same Party like garbage in the end. And then there was the sudden death of Li Keqiang at the Dongjiao State Guesthouse in Shanghai, which many observers believe also spoke volumes. Li had originally been groomed as the successor representing Hu Jintao's Communist Youth League faction and was seen as Xi Jinping's only real political counterweight. His death was, in effect, the destruction of that faction's future. Under Communist Party rule, Hu Jintao's entire life was shaped and scarred by the system. Although the crackdown in Lhasa helped elevate him to the pinnacle of power, he ultimately became a sacrifice offered up by the very system he served. Hu Jintao's tragedy is not merely the tragedy of one individual. It is an extreme illustration of the banality of evil and the survivorship bias produced under totalitarianism. Many analysts have argued that the Chinese Communist system resembles a gigantic black hole. First, it devoured Hu Jintao's family. Then, it consumed his conscience. And finally, it led him to willingly sit upon the altar of the enemy who had killed his father, operating that machine himself for 20 years. What do you think about Hu Jintao's life? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you for watching and see you next time.