Global Courant
Yan Mingfu, the son of a Chinese Communist Party spy who became Mao Zedong’s interpreter and a negotiator who tried to defuse the standoff between the party and student protesters who occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989, died in Beijing on Monday. He turned 91.
His daughter, Yan Lan, confirmed the death in a statement in the Chinese magazine Caixin. She did not specify a cause, but Mr. Yan had endured a succession of illnesses at an advanced age.
“Dad passed away peacefully, ending a life of turmoil and drama,” Ms. Yan wrote.
Mr. Yan was thrust into the center of the stage for key moments in China’s Cold War years. He was a Russian-language translator for Mao as he built an alliance with the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and later as the alliance slides into bitter hostility. He accompanied Chinese leaders again in 1989, when Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev visited Beijing to heal the rift.
But the most dramatic and perhaps most painful episode in Mr. Yan related to the pro-democracy protests that occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the visit of Mr. Gorbachev overshadowed. Mr. Yan became an envoy for the demonstrators and for the Chinese intellectuals who tried to prevent a bloody repression.
“Yan Mingfu remained in the system all his life as a follower of the Communist Party, but at that crucial moment in 1989, his humanity won out for his partisan spirit,” said Wang Dan, a former student leader of the 1989 protests, now the United States. States, wrote in a tribute. “People like him are very rare in the Communist Party.”
Mr. Yan was born in Beijing on November 11, 1931, the youngest of six children. His father, Yan Baohang, was an official of the ruling Nationalist Party secretly joined the rival Communist Party in 1937 and became a clandestine agent. His mother, Gao Sutong, was a housewife.
The family moved from city to city as the Japanese invasion spread across China, Mr. In a memoir published in 2015, Yan settled in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing, which became a wartime base for the Nationalists.
Young Mingfu saw mysterious visitors – Communist Party contacts – slip into a room on the second floor of the family home to meet his father.
“Apparently they were playing mahjong,” Mr. Yan wrote in his memoirs. “They even held meetings.”
The family later moved to northeastern China, near the border with the Soviet Union, and Mr. Yan decided to study Russian. After Mao’s Communists took power in 1949, he became an interpreter for government officials. It was an era when China looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration, and Mr. Yan became an interpreter for the Soviet advisers who helped Mao’s government.
In 1955, he married Wu Keliang, a fellow interpreter. She died in 2015. In addition to their daughter, Mrs. Yan, he leaves behind a grandson, according to him a memoir his daughter wrote about her family.
Mr. Yan accompanied Chinese leaders on visits to the Soviet Union, and in 1957 served as Mao’s interpreter during delicate discussions in Moscow as tensions over ideology and foreign policy began to complicate ties between the two countries.
On a hot August day in 1958, Mao and the visiting Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, exchanged thoughts while floating in a swimming pool. Mr. Yan and another interpreter circled around the edge of the pool, straining to catch each leader’s words and yelling at the other.
“By the time they finished swimming and climbed out to get dressed,” Mr. Yan recalled, “we were drenched in sweat.”
In the two decades that followed, Mr. Yan was swept along by the growing turmoil of Mao’s revolution and by the government’s growing distrust of officials who maintained close contacts with the Soviet Union. He was thrown into prison in 1967, accused of being a Soviet spy and a traitor.
His wife, Mrs. Wu, also endured harsh interrogations and was exiled to the countryside. The couple and their daughter were reunited when Mr. Yan was released from prison in 1975 as Mao’s Cultural Revolution waned.
In 1989, Mr. Yan was the head of the United Front Department of the Chinese Communist Party, which deals with relations with intellectuals and with ethnic and religious groups.
When student protesters occupied Tiananmen Square to demand democratization and an end to civil service corruption, Mr. Yan sent as a go-between by the reformist party secretary, Zhao Ziyang, who wanted to persuade the students to end a hunger strike and a successful visit to Beijing by Mr. Gorbachev.
Deng Xiaoping, China’s Supreme Leader, Mr. Yan asked to attend the meetings of Mr. Gorbachev. “For many years, Mingfu has always been involved in these Sino-Russian negotiations,” said Mr. Deng according to the memoirs of Mr. Yan. “Let him be there this time too.”
During meetings with student leaders, Mr. Yan to persuade them to break off the hunger strike that had brought political passions to a head. He and other officials also turned to liberal-minded journalists, academics and intellectuals to try to reach an understanding with the protesters.
But hardline party leaders were impatient for confrontation and rejected the possibility of making major concessions. And the fiery, seething pro-democracy movement was not an easy negotiating partner.
Mr. Yan ventured into Tiananmen Square in mid-May to try to win over the demonstrators, many of them collapsed on bedding as they refused to eat and drink. He promised that their demands would be considered and that they would not be accused.
“Seeing you students like this makes me feel deeply, deeply upset,” said Mr. Yan to the crowd, according to Zhou Duo, an intellectual who has been with Mr. Yan in Tiananmen Square. “Your students are full of life and your wishes are well-intentioned.”
He ended with a plea: “If you don’t believe my assurances, you can take me, Yan Mingfu, as a hostage to your school.”
Mr. Zhou wrote that Mr. Yan had shown him that “not all communists come from one monolithic lump of iron”.
Deng pushed aside efforts to find a peaceful way out of the standoff. Less than three weeks later, troops poured into central Beijing and fired into crowds gathered to protest or watch. Hundreds of civilians – or thousands by some estimates – died.
Mr. Yan was demoted. He spent the rest of his career as Deputy Minister of Civil Affairs and then as the chairman of the China Charity Federation, a government-sponsored philanthropic organization.
When he retired, he wrote his memoirs. Reflecting official sensibilities about the discussion at the time, they didn’t hit the 1980s.
