Yao Jianfu (October 9, 1932—) was born in Nanjing. His father was a Kuomintang officer who participated in a coup against the KMT during the Huaihai Campaign; his mother was an elementary school teacher. Yao graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology in 1957 and was assigned to the China Academy of Agricultural Mechanization Science as an engineer. During the Great Famine, Yao was sent to work in a rural commune in Shanxi Province for one year, where he witnessed firsthand the conditions of the peasants. During the Cultural Revolution, Yao's family was targeted; Yao's mother was beaten to death by Red Guards and his father hanged himself. Yao himself was labeled a counter-revolutionary for having made disrespectful remarks about Jiang Qing (the fourth wife of Mao Zedong and deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group in 1966), and was sent down to a labor camp in Hunan province. He was rehabilitated after the Cultural Revolution.
In 1982, Yao was assigned to the CCP Rural Policy Research Office and the Rural Development Research Center of the State Council as a researcher; in 1992, he became a researcher at the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, a position he held until he retired. In 2003, he was a coordinate researcher at the Yenching Institute of Harvard University.
Yao is concerned with public affairs and is a frequent commentator on history and politics in China. He has interviewed Zhao Ziyang, a reformist leader during the 80s and purged after the 1989 student movement; he has also interviewed Chen Xitong, the then Party Secretary of Beijing during the 1989 democracy movement who was considered one of the main suppressors of the movement, and published a transcript of that interview in 2012, *Chen Xitong’s Personal Accounts*.
In April 2014, journalist Gao Yu was arrested by authorities for exposing a CCP document containing policies against media freedom and democracy. Yao was arrested in the same case and released on bail pending trial, but has never been fully freed. Yao was reportedly living in a nursing home but under close surveillance.
In 1982, Yao was assigned to the CCP Rural Policy Research Office and the Rural Development Research Center of the State Council as a researcher; in 1992, he became a researcher at the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, a position he held until he retired. In 2003, he was a coordinate researcher at the Yenching Institute of Harvard University.
Yao is concerned with public affairs and is a frequent commentator on history and politics in China. He has interviewed Zhao Ziyang, a reformist leader during the 80s and purged after the 1989 student movement; he has also interviewed Chen Xitong, the then Party Secretary of Beijing during the 1989 democracy movement who was considered one of the main suppressors of the movement, and published a transcript of that interview in 2012, *Chen Xitong’s Personal Accounts*.
In April 2014, journalist Gao Yu was arrested by authorities for exposing a CCP document containing policies against media freedom and democracy. Yao was arrested in the same case and released on bail pending trial, but has never been fully freed. Yao was reportedly living in a nursing home but under close surveillance.
