27 Facts About Bao Tong

Bao Tong was Director of the Office of Political Reform of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the Policy Secretary of Zhao Ziyang.

Bao Tong was Director of the Drafting Committee for the CCP 13th Party Congresses, known for its strong support of market reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping.

Bao Tong was studying at the Nanyang High School in Shanghai when he met his wife, Jiang Zongcao.

Bao Tong was an active member of the communist underground who was kicked out of many schools for organising demonstrations.

Bao Tong himself had joined the underground Chinese Communist Party in 1949 before the CCP came to power, following the civil war.

Bao Tong was recruited to work for the newly established Communist government on the day he was taking entrance exams for university, during his lunch break.

Bao Tong was to be moved to Beijing where he was to work for the Organization Department under An Ziwen, who was to become an important mentor to him, until the beginning of the Cultural Revolution when they were both purged.

Bao Tong was to spend the rest of the Cultural Revolution doing hard labour in the countryside and in a factory.

Bao Tong was reinstated after the Cultural Revolution and was recommended to Zhao Ziyang, Chinese Premier from 1980 to 1987 and CCP General Secretary from 1987 to 1989.

Bao Tong became Policy Secretary to Zhao, and was made the Director of the Office of Political Reform of the CCP Central Committee.

Bao Tong was Director of the Drafting Committee for the CCP 13th Party Congresses, which successfully passed a political reform package that attempted to end nepotism and separate party and state.

Bao Tong was the political secretary of the Politburo Standing Committee between November 1987 and May 1989.

Bao Tong was a close associate of Zhao and the writer of his speeches and editorials supporting a democratic and legal approach to the student movement.

Zhao was held under house arrest for the rest of his life, while Bao Tong was officially charged with "revealing state secrets and counter-revolutionary propagandizing", the highest government official to be charged in relation to the 1989 movement.

Bao Tong was publicly convicted in 1992 in a brief show trial and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment with two years deprivation of political rights.

Bao Tong served his full sentence in isolation at Qincheng Prison.

Visitors were screened, the phone was tapped or cut off entirely, and Bao Tong was followed by an entourage of men the moment he stepped out of his home.

Bao Tong appealed for the restoration of civil and political rights of Zhao Ziyang from 1998 until Zhao's death.

Bao Tong was instrumental in the publication in May 2009 of Zhao Ziyang's memoir, based on audiotapes that Zhao made secretly while under house arrest and discovered after his death in 2005.

Bao Tong continued to write articles openly critical of the government and its policies.

Bao Tong supported further democratic development in Hong Kong and continued to voice the need for political reform in China.

Bao Tong was a signer of the Charter 08 manifesto and called for the release of Liu Xiaobo, an organiser of the charter who was arrested in December 2008.

Bao Tong's wife, pushed to the ground by a policeman, received a bone fracture in her spine that resulted in her being hospitalized for three months.

Bao Tong was followed everywhere he went, and was occasionally blocked from "sensitive" events or places, for example, the home of Zhao Ziyang while he was alive, and his funeral after his death in 2005.

Bao Tong was allowed to leave Beijing on three occasions since his arrest in 1989, the last time in 2009 for a holiday by invitation and escort of the Public Security from 22 May to 7 June, neatly avoiding the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre.

Bao Tong died in Beijing on 9 November 2022, at the age of 90; the death was announced on Twitter by Bao Tong Pu.

Journalist Gao Yu, a close friend of Bao Tong, stated that he had died of myelodysplastic syndrome, and that the funeral would take place on 15 November 2022.