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
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.
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.
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.
Yan returned to government work in 1991, but was sidelined to the position of vice-minister of civil affairs. He retired from the post in July 1997.
He was born in northeastern Liaoning province in 1931, the son of Yan Baohang, was a top communist spy serving in the nationalist Kuomintang government.
After graduating from the Harbin Foreign Language College in 1949, Yan Mingfu became the official Russian translator for party founder Mao Zedong.
He was appointed chief of the United Front Work Department in 1985 and elected to the party’s Central Committee two years later.
After retiring, Yan continued to play a role in Beijing’s overseas liaison work. He attended the funeral of Chinese warlord Chang Hsueh-liang in Honolulu in 2001.
Yan Baohang tried to broker Chang’s release via Communist Party leader Zhou Enlai, but was not successful, according to Yan Mingfu’s memoir published in 2015. Chang moved to the US in 1993.