With the increasing growth of HVDC transmission system, preliminary formation of AC-DC hybrid power grid brings new challenges to reactive power optimization of traditional power systems. Based on bare-bones differential evolution algorithm (IBBDE), an improved BBDE algorithm (IBBDE) is proposed to solve the reactive power optimization of hybrid AC-DC system. Initialization of population using generalized opposition based learning and self-adaption of crossover factor are introduced to enhance the global convergence of algorithm. The IBBDE algorithm is tested on IEEE 30-bus distribution system with HVDC, the simulation results comparing with DE and BBDE algorithm demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed IBBDE algorithm.