Senior Communist Party official lived in Los Angeles since 1990
CHOI CHI-YUK AND GARY CHEUNG
UPDATED : Wednesday, 29 June, 2016, 6:30pm
Xu Jiatun, a former Communist Party cadre who served as Beijing’s top envoy in Hong Kong for seven years through a period of political turbulence in the mainland and anxiety in the city, died Wednesday at the age of 100 in Los Angeles.
Helen Li, an assistant to Xu, confirmed his death to thePost.
The Communist Party stalwart who sought political exile in the United States after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, was hospitalised last month for renal failure and heart problems.
Beijing’s former top envoy in Hong Kong battles for health in US hospital
Xu rose through the party’s ranks over a six-decade career that took him from his native Jiangsu province to a high-profile position directing Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong.
He served in the position from 1983 to 1990 as Chinese and British authorities negotiated the city’s future in the run-up to its 1997 handover.
But mostly he will be remembered for sympathising with students in the 1989 pro-democracy movement that sprung up around Tiananmen Square in Beijing, an incident that led him to flee the country.
Xu in 1983, the year he took his position leading Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong. Photo: Xinhua.
As a liberal-minded party veteran, Xu was close to Zhao Ziyang, the former premier and Communist Party general secretary.
After fleeing to the US, he was barred by Beijing from returning to China.
Xu is survived by eight children. Three sons and four daughters live on the mainland, and he lived with a daughter in California.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1983140/xu-jiatun-beijings-former-top-man-hong-kong-who-fled-us
