Promising for what? Hu is regarded as a soft negotiator/messenger in global diplomacy - a strategy which Xi strongly rejected with unfriendly countries but which really backfired or failed to achieve full wconomic effect. Hu was very popular among non-political people because he was quiet.

He however was even more economically conservative than Deng and also orchestrated the violent repression of Tibet and legislated the threat to attack an independent Taiwan.

What is there to suggest to you that either of these people were nice or good people?

A 'reform' in China is not a progressive policy and everything is done in the framework of having a viable and more importantly, stable and secure socialist dictatorship.

Their 'reforms' are things like "perfect goal, poor execution. We'll torture people differently this time to achieve a better result".

China has been winning the global propaganda war that puts China in a very fair, free and positive light especially among developing countries and in Africa.

I really can't recall any instance of Hu being seen as a particularly strong leader and certainly nothing as an economic/social reformist that hoped to radically change his society. He reformed things in order to reduce corruption and party fighting. I'm not really sure what kind of reforms you are hinting at that are not anything outside of the norm of all Chinese leaders. Hu was an administrative reformist but socially repressive and economically concervative and was just in general a very cautious leader. If he has a reputation as an economic and social progressive reformist now - which I don't believe he does - then that is nothing but a new propaganda. I suppose it helps when a leader is long-gone from the role that the party paints them in a more positive light so people don't become bitter, but learn to remember that every leader was actually good for them in the end.

China doesn't want to "open up" economically. They want to get rich quick and capitalism is the way to do it. Many industries overproduced so why shouldn't they be exporting their surplus product? It's also useful for promoting new technologies which allows creative people access to reverse engineer them and think about domestic innovation.

Many industries have timeframes to become independent of reliance on other countries. The long, long-term goal is Autarky because trade is one area where the U.S has them by the balls if they go starting a conflict with Taiwan or India.

The USSR was more or less closed to trade and look at the quality of their industry and domestic products as a result - the quality is even lower than what it was in the 1970s. If it wasn't for all the technology and people stolen from the DDR, modern Russia would be even worse off. Of course China doesn't want to remain that isolated. It wasn't working for them. They promote trade and international education and suddenly their technology and quality of life greatly leaps forward at a rapid pace. Xi is trying to reign that in so that these advanced products don't need to be imported, otherwise they lose all of their educated talent and just back to square 1 because importing is the path of least resistance but it can also be an economic opium.