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Bao Tong, the most senior Chinese Communist party official jailed over the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement, has died four days after his 90th birthday.
The former top aide of the reformist leader Zhao Ziyang, a sympathiser of the student-led movement that was crushed by the military in 1989, died early on Wednesday morning in Beijing, his son Bao Pu said in a brief Twitter post.
His daughter Bao Jian said in another post that “he was still full of hope for this land”. She quoted him as saying on his 90th birthday on Saturday: “Man has a minor historical existence in the world … whether I turn 90 or not is significant, but what is important is that we strive for today and the future … and to do what we can, should and must do.”
The dissident journalist Gao Yu, a close friend of Bao’s, said in a post that he had died of Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), a type of rare blood cancer.
