Do we like them?

Do we like Hu Jintao?

Our score: 3 out of 10. Tight political control and a serious allegation over Tibet, set against rapid growth in living standards, and nothing found either way on LGBTQ+ people.

Hu Jintao ran China as Communist Party chief and president for a decade, handing over around 2012 to 2013. Before that he was the party secretary of Tibet, which is where the most serious claims about him come from. Nothing new has turned up on him in 2026, and the dramatic bit of recent history is his 2022 exit from a party congress.

The Tibet story goes back to March 1989. Writing in the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief in 2002, former correspondent Jonathan Mirsky alleged that security forces fired on crowds in Lhasa under orders from Hu, killing an estimated 100 to 700 Tibetans. That is one writer's opinion piece, with no primary source given for the figure, and the death toll is disputed. It is an allegation, not a finding, but it sits at the centre of his record.

As leader he rejected political liberalisation early on, according to China Digital Times, which also reported that he tightened control over state media and cracked down on dissent. A former party researcher dated his disappointment to the 2005 closure of liberal-leaning websites: “We didn't realize Hu would turn out to be so conservative.” In 2009, after unrest in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch urged him to acknowledge Uighur grievances, and noted that both Uighurs and Han had been violent.

On the harm check: we found nothing on what he has said or done about LGBTQ+ people, trans people or women, so we can't say either way. On the planet, his 2009 UN speech pledged to cut carbon intensity “by a notable margin” by 2020, but with no numbers attached. Greenpeace China called it a positive sign, and a US envoy said he heard little new. We found no sign of conspiracy theories or culture-war grifting.

The good stuff is real, if mostly economic. CFR's Elizabeth Economy credits his tenure with per capita GDP rising from about $1,200 to $5,400 and the world's largest high-speed rail network. But China remained deeply unequal by the end of it, with analyst Kerry Brown saying it was as unequal, if not more, than when he took power. Critics also pointed to environmental decline he didn't fix.

The recent drama was October 2022, when Hu was escorted off the stage at the party congress's closing ceremony while Xi Jinping sat beside him. Video showed him appearing to resist, and state media left the scene out. The reports we read gave no reason, and later coverage had him reappearing at Jiang Zemin's memorial in December 2022. Beyond that, the sources we read don't show him in public life since.