The sons of two iconic Chinese leaders are likely to become senior advisers to parliament as President Hu Jintao moves to bolster power by wooing children of the Communist Party elite.

The two leaders are Deng Xiaoping, who freed China from the shackles of communism but who is better known in the West for sending in troops to crush pro-democracy protests centred on Tiananmen Square in 1989, and Hu Yaobang, who was purged in 1987 for being too liberal.

Deng’s wheelchair-bound son, Deng Pufang, 63, chairman of the China Disabled Persons Federation, is expected to be named a vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in mid-March.

Hu Deping, 65, the eldest son of Hu Yaobang, is also tipped to become a vice-chairman of the advisory body to parliament. The son is now a vice-minister of united front work responsible for winning over non-Communists.

The promotions, if confirmed, would make both men national leaders. A vice-chairman of the advisory body to parliament holds a rank equivalent to a vice-premier.

Analysts said Hu Jintao, who doubles as Party and military chief, hoped to tap the lingering influence of both Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997, and Hu Yaobang, who died in 1989.
“Hu Yaobang was pro-reform and is still popular among many in the Party today,” political commentator Liang Kezhi said.

Deng Xiaoping’s image was tarnished after he sent in troops to crush the 1989 protests, but his legacy of introducing sweeping reforms which transformed China from an economic backwater into the world’s fourth biggest economy is undisputable.

He had been purged but bounced back from political wilderness to give more than one billion people the freedom to choose where to live, study or work and when to marry, divorce or become pregnant.

His eldest son is paralysed from the waist down after mysteriously falling from a Peking University building in 1968 at the height the Cultural Revolution.