On November 18, 2005, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held a symposium to commemorate the 90th birth anniversary of the late senior leader Hu Yaobang.

The official commemoration was attended by Premier Wen Jiabao, Vice President Zeng Qinghong and Secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection Wu Guanzheng.

Addressing the commemoration, Vice President Zeng said, "Comrade Hu Yaobang was a long-tested and staunch communist warrior, a great proletarian revolutionist and statesman, an outstanding political leader for the Chinese army, and a prominent leader who had long assumed crucial leading posts of the CPC."

"In his revolutionary career of six decades," Zeng said, "he contributed all his life and built immortal merits for the liberation and happiness of the Chinese people, for the development and prosperity of the Chinese socialism, for implementation of the reform and opening-up policy as well as the country's socialist modernization drive."

"His historic achievements and moral character will always remembered by the Party and our people," Zeng said.

Hu was born on Nov. 20, 1915, to a poor peasant family in central China's Hunan Province and joined the CPC in September of 1933.

In December 1978 at the landmark third plenum of the 11th CPC Central Committee, Hu was elected a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. In February 1980, he was elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee. In September 1982, he again took the post of general secretary of the CPC Central Committee. In November 1987, he was elected a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

After leading the CPC Central Committee Organization Department at the end of 1977, Hu helped correct numerous misjudged cases during the "culture revolution" (1966-76) and exonerate more than three million purged cadres.

Never having received higher education, the open-minded Hu stressed the importance of knowledge for a modern China. "Without intellectuals," he ever said, "we could not achieve the four modernization in industry, agriculture, defense and science and technology."