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Hu
steps up but Jiang stays on top
By
Francesco Sisci
 BEIJING - The lineup of the new
top Chinese leadership presented on Friday before the
national and international press was, in order of
ranking, Hu Jintao, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin,
Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju, Wu Guanzheng, Li Changchun and
Luo Gan.
However, in the list of the official
biographies handed out after the ceremony, the name of
Jiang Zemin was still the first, as he had been,
expectedly, elected president of the Military
Commission. And Hu in his opening speech underscored the
importance of Jiang's theory of the "Three Represents"
as the compass for the actions of the Chinese Communist
Party.
Jiang will thus withdraw now from many
duties that will be taken over by Hu. The new head of
the party seemed keen from the start on conveying the
idea of unity in the leadership. He humored the
lowest-ranked member of the new Standing Committee, who
is, however, the oldest of the group, calling Luo Gan
womende da ge, "our elder brother", which also
means something like "our boss".
Overall, the
politburo, enlarged to nine people, looks more like a
ministerial cabinet, and given the number of members,
larger than usual (the Standing Committee has been as
small as five people), will further guarantee Jiang's
lasting influence, as the larger group implies longer
consultations that will involve the president.
Another feature witnessing to Jiang's importance
is the age factor. The politburo members are almost all
in their 60s and Hu, 59, is one of the younger guys. Age
difference has been traditionally important in China to
establish one's authority, and Hu appears to be among
peers. Jiang, 76, conversely sticks out for being at
least a decade older than the older guys now on the
wheel, a further testimony of his importance.
In
this new group of men there is no younger person who can
be identified as the leader of the fifth generation of
the leadership. The choice for Hu's successors, then,
will have to be postponed to the next party congress or
to altogether different methods of selection. In fact,
this time the official rhetoric stressed that the
leaders were elected, and people were actually voted,
and not acclaimed, into the politburo. In the Central
Committee some didn't get voted in. Therefore, it is
possible that the fifth generation of leaders will have
to go through a more democratic process of selection
than the present system of appointment and choice from
the leaders.
In the present process, to make
things more transparent, the opinion of elderly veterans
is taken into account. This will end, through the
natural demise of the veterans and through the interest
of younger people to push them aside. This will make it
difficult to select future leaders without some kind of
internal democratic vote. In the meantime, the party
will experiment with the trappings of cohesion with
Jiang in and out the decision-making room. The party
wants to avoid the kind of double leadership that
occurred in 1987 between Deng Xiaoping, head of the
Military Commission, and Zhao Ziyang, secretary general
of the party, which is now regarded as the power
struggle that led to the Tiananmen movement in 1989.
As the ranking made clear, there is no room for
doubt: ultimately Jiang will be on top of Hu, although
Hu will run the day-to-day businesses. In 1987, the
situation was not as clear, and Deng officially was not
ranked above Zhao.
The other important news is
the role of the military in the decision-making process.
Only two military men are in the politburo, Guo Boxiong
and Cao Gangchuan, and they are pretty low in the
hierarchy, respectively numbers 22 and 23.
Conversely, very high is the issue of law and
discipline. For the first time in the Standing Committee
there is a head of a party disciplinary commission, Wu
Guanzheng, number 7 of the hierarchy, with Luo Gan,
number 9, heading the law commission. Corruption is the
great worry of the party, and law and order are the
apparent solution.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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