China could have been a vastly different country if Hu Yaobang - who thought Mao left nothing worth emulating, wanted freedom of the press, and wanted to erode centralized leadership and his faction of reformers had kept power. Instead, his death sparked the Tiananmen Square Protests that was the nail in the coffin for his "heir" Zhao Ziyang's career. And ironically, Hu Yaobang's rehabilitation of Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping's father, has led to a China now governed by the principles he always feared would root the Party out - a central tyrant like Mao who believes in crushing even the smallest pockets of dissent.

https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/the-long-reach-of-hu-yaobang/