Zhu Houze (; January 1931 – 9 May 2010) was a Chinese politician most active in the 1980s, best known for his term as head of the

Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party The Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, also known as the Propaganda Department or Central Propaganda Department, is an internal division of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in charge of spreading C ...

. As head of the department he presided over a period of liberalism in the Chinese press.

Biography

Zhu was born in

Zhijin County Zhijin County is a county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Bijie in west-central Guizhou province, China. History Zhijin has been inhabited since the Qin, populated mainly by the Gelao. After the Jin, the Yi move ...

Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to t ...

province. He joined the Communist Party in 1949, the year the People's Republic of China was founded. He attended Guiyang Normal College. In 1964, during the

Socialist Education Movement __NOTOC__ The Socialist Education Movement (, abbreviated 社教运动 or 社教運動), also known as the Four Cleanups Movement () was a movement launched by Mao Zedong in 1963 in the People's Republic of China. Mao sought to remove reactionary e ...

, Zhu was expelled from the Communist Party and sent to perform manual labour. Zhu was politically rehabilitated in 1978, then became head of the party organization in

Guiyang Guiyang (; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ), historically rendered as Kweiyang, is the capital of Guizhou province of the People's Republic of China. It is located in the center of the province, situated on the east of the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau, ...

, then promoted to provincial First Secretary of Guizhou. During his tenure in Guizhou he was known for the significant progress the province made in economic development; the annual increase in industrial output increased by 18%. Zhu's achievements were noted by national leaders such as

Hu Yaobang Hu Yaobang (; 20 November 1915 – 15 April 1989) was a high-ranking official of the People's Republic of China. He held the top office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1981 to 1987, first as Chairman from 1981 to 1982, then as Gene ...

. In April 1985, Zhu was named Guizhou party chief (top official of the province). In August that year, he was transferred to Beijing to serve as head of the Propaganda Department, becoming one of the top deputies of party General Secretary Hu Yaobang. During Zhu's term as propaganda department head, he spearheaded propaganda policy of "Generous, Tolerant, Relaxed" (), significantly loosening the ideological shackles of the communist state and leading to increased liberalization in the arts and in academic institutions. However, Zhu's fortunes and the policies he espoused were short-lived. Mirroring the fate of his patron Hu Yaobang, in February 1987 Zhu was dismissed from his propaganda post during the anti-

bourgeois liberalization Bourgeois liberalization () is a term used by the Chinese Communist Party to refer to either the prevalent political orientation of Western representative democracy or mainstream Western popular culture. The late 1980s saw the first major usage o ...

campaign. Though disgraced, he was given a position at the State Council Rural Development Centre; during the 13th Party Congress held in 1987, he failed to secure election to the party's Central Committee; that is, he appeared on the candidate list but did not receive enough votes for confirmation. However, in 1988, reformist general secretary

Zhao Ziyang Zhao Ziyang ( zh, 赵紫阳; pronounced , 17 October 1919 – 17 January 2005) was a Chinese politician. He was the third premier of the People's Republic of China from 1980 to 1987, vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 198 ...

named Zhu the first-ranked vice chairman of the

All-China Federation of Trade Unions The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is the national trade union center of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest trade union in the world with 302 million members in 1,713,000 primary trade union organizations. The ACFTU ...

. Following the

Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...

, Zhu was yet again purged for supporting the student movement. He was expelled for the second time in his life from the Chinese Communist Party. He retreated from public view thereafter and died on May 9, 2010 in Beijing.

References

{{Authority control 1931 births 2010 deaths People from Bijie Chinese Communist Party politicians from Guizhou Heads of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party People's Republic of China politicians from Guizhou Political office-holders in Guizhou