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where Deng was also active. They were both transferred to Peking in 1952, with Hu heading the New Democratic Youth League (formerly, and again subsequently the Communist Youth League), a position he would hold until the Cultural Revolution. In this capacity he led youth. delegations to Romania, Albania and the USSR. For much of this time Deng was the General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee and the two men must have worked closely together once again. Hu's importance was confirmed by his election to the Central Committee in 1956.
5. Hu was an early victim of the Cultural Revolution. After being removed from the Communist Youth League in 1967, he spent (according to his own account) two and a half years in a stable and five more "sitting at home". He seems to have suffered relatively lightly however and was rehabilitated in 1972. He did not return to prominence until 1975 when Deng Xiaoping, by then also rehabilitated and a Vice-Premier, assigned him to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. There he tried to improve the treatment and conditions of intellectuals and helped to prepare an important report proposing a change in the role of intellectuals in Chinese society. This work won him the support of many intellectuals but also the enmity of the Maoist radicals. The report was attacked as a "poisonous weed" by the 'Gang of Four' and Hu disappeared in 1976 after Deng Xiaoping had once more fallen from power.
6.
Deng's period in the wildeness was this time shortlived. He became politically active again in 1977 and from then on began the rise which would make him China's paramount leader, able to instigate the reform process that would have a thoroughgoing effect on almost all aspects of Chinese society. Hu Yaobang obviously figured in Deng's plans from an early stage. From 1977, Hu took on increasingly important positions in the Party hierarchy until, in 1980, he joined the Party's leading body, the Standing Committee of the Politburo, and assumed the Party's most senior position as General Secretary of the Central Committee.
7. As one of China's top leaders and an obvious successor to Deng Xiaoping, Hu has been a controversial and somewhat unconventional figure. Deng may well have seen in Hu's energy and drive just those qualities needed to overcome conservative resistance to change and to carry out reformes which challenge many long-held and
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