Hu's
sixth-generation proteges play it
safe By Willy Lam
Rounds of ritualistic protestation of
loyalty to the "Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
central authorities with Comrade Hu Jintao as
General Secretary" show President Hu Jintao has
become the biggest beneficiary of the Bo Xilai
scandal.
Apart from pulling out all the
stops to ensure that more of his Communist Youth
League (CYL) faction affiliates from the Fifth
Generation - a reference to cadres born in the
1950s - will be inducted into the Politburo
Standing Committee (PBSC) at the 18th Party
Congress this autumn, the supremo is boosting the
political standing of a few key members of the
Sixth Generation leadership.
Hu Chunhua
(born 1963) and Zhou Qiang (born 1960), Party
Secretary of respectively the Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region
and Hunan Province, are
tipped to be made ordinary Politburo members at
the forthcoming congress. The two are also deemed
frontrunners for making the PBSC to be established
at the 19th CCP Congress in 2017.
This
means that while Vice President Xi Jinping will
succeed Hu as party chief later this year, the 58
year-old princeling may have to yield his post to
a CYL Faction stalwart at the 20th Party Congress
in 2022.
Hu Chunhua (not related to the
president) and Zhou Qiang, both former CYL party
secretaries, are in terms of party ranking, two of
the three most senior Sixth-Generation cadres in
the CCP. The third is Party Secretary of Jilin
Province Sun Zhengcai (born 1963), a former State
Council technocrat who has no obvious factional
affiliations. To get a better grasp of the future
trajectory of the CYL Faction, it is instructive
to study the political traits of Hu and Zhou and
their paths to prominence.
A graduate in
Chinese language and literature from elite Peking
University, Hu served in the Tibet Autonomous
Region for 20 years before becoming party boss of
the CYL in 2006 and governor of Hebei Province in
2008. He assumed his current post as Inner
Mongolia's party chief in 2010, when he was merely
46 years old. The speed of his promotions - his
stint at the CYL and in Hebei each lasted merely
18 months - is probably due to the fact that he
enjoys the full confidence of President Hu.
The younger Hu is tipped to be made Party
Secretary of either Guangdong Province or the
Beijing municipality at the 18th Party Congress.
Since both posts carry Politburo status, this
would enable Hu to become the youngest Politburo
member at the 18th Party Congress.
In the
tradition of Chinese politics, up-and-coming
cadres avoid making controversial statements - and
initiating overly ambitious projects - so as not
to be seen as upstaging their superiors or
departing from the line of the central party
authorities. The younger Hu obviously caught the
eye of President Hu for having acquitted himself
well in the rugged terrain of Tibet, where the
older Hu was party boss from 1988 to 1992.
Chinese media accounts of Hu Chunhua have
emphasized his ability to "eat bitterness" in one
of the most challenging parts of China. While
there is little information about how Hu battled
the secessionist movement in the restive Tibet
region, his proverbial helicopter ride to the top
testifies to the leadership's high assessment of
his capacity in two key party tasks for the 21st
century: upholding political stability; and
ensuring national unity and patriotic pride.
Despite his relative greenness in the
party's high echelons, Hu Chunhua is also an
intriguing foil to one of the biggest villains in
Chinese politics since the Cultural Revolution:
the disgraced and now former Chongqing Party
Secretary Bo Xilai. Instead of humbly carrying out
the center's orders, the egotistical and ambitious
Bo took every opportunity to promote himself while
serving in the western Chinese metropolis - to the
point of challenging the authority of President Hu
and Premier Wen Jiabao. Hu, on the other hand, has
the reputation of always and unconditionally
toeing the Beijing line.
Not surprisingly,
Hu Chunhua is one of the regional leaders who are
implementing the post-Bo Xilai loyalty drives with
extra gusto. At a meeting of senior Inner
Mongolian officials earlier this month, Hu swore
absolute fealty to the Hu Jintao-led central
leadership.
"We must self-consciously
maintain a high degree of unison with the center
with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary,"
Party Secretary Hu indicated. Without referring to
the Bo incident, Hu noted "we must always maintain
a clear-headed and resolute [stance] in politics,
and be resolute in following through the decisions
and arrangements of party central authorities." Hu
also underscored the imperative of upholding
stability and harmony in Inner Mongolia - which
witnessed sizable ethnic strife last year - "so as
not to complicate the national situation of
stability".
Contrary to the charismatic,
media-savvy Bo, Hu Chunhua is self-effacing to a
fault. During the press conference that he gave at
the National People's Congress (NPC) last month,
Hu answered only four of the 20 questions raised
by the 90 or so Chinese and foreigner reporters
covering the rising star.
After all, he
opened the conference with this caveat: "Today is
open day for the Inner Mongolian delegation.
Please ask me only questions related to Inner
Mongolia." Hu refused to comment on issues
including whether he had ever faced pressure in
maintaining stability in his region; how he felt
about being one of the youngest provincial party
secretaries of China; and whether he had a
microblog account.
Hu's cautious approach
sets him apart from relatively liberal cadres in
the CYL camp, including Politburo member and
Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang. In the past
year, Wang (born 1955) won praise from Chinese and
international commentators for his conciliatory
approach in handling social unrest.
Wang,
who has a high chance of making the PBSC at the
18th Party Congress, also has won plaudits for the
relatively free rein that he has given the
Guangdong media. The CYL heavyweight, however,
also has incurred the ire of the CCP's
conservative wing for being too close to the
liberal thinking of Premier Wen, who is a
consistent advocate of political liberalization.
Hu Chunhua, however, has worked hard to
avoid being drawn into the CCP's Byzantine
factional intrigue. Most of his policy statements
evince a down-to-earth approach to fulfilling key
party goals such as upholding socio-political
stability (weihu wending). In a recent
speech on the prospects of preserving stability in
Inner Mongolia, Hu admitted "the main reason"
behind riots and disturbances in his region was
that "we have not done our work to a satisfactory
enough level."
Apart from pledging that
party and government units would handle "mass
incidents" according to law, Hu stuck to
patriarchal ways and means of "educating the
masses." The party boss urged his underlings to
educate the masses on a correct understanding of
the relationship between "personal interests and
the interests of the state".
He added "The
masses must be taught to understand the boundary
separating reasonable aspirations from
unreasonable demands-and that even reasonable
aspirations must be voiced in a rational and legal
manner". While meeting leading local media
representatives earlier this year, Hu noted news
organizations must "provide correct guidance to
public opinion [by] taking the standpoint of the
party and government".
Zhou Qiang, another
key Sixth Generation protege of President Hu's,
has a legal background. A graduate of the
Chongqing-based Southwestern University of
Politics and Law, Zhou served in the Ministry of
Justice from 1985 to 1995. He then worked in the
headquarters of the CYL, which he headed from 1998
to 2006.
The Hubei Province native
subsequently was transferred to Hunan for him to
acquire much-needed experience as a regional
administrator. Since Hu became Hunan Party
Secretary one year after Hu Chunhua had attained a
similar rank, analysts believe he might have lost
the race to become the potential "core" of the
Sixth Generation leadership to Hu. Nonetheless,
Zhou is considered a frontrunner to replace Zhang
Dejiang as the Party Secretary of Chongqing - a
position that also carries Politburo status - at
the 18th Party Congress.
Zhang, who is
also vice premier, took over the job of Chongqing
party boss from Bo Xilai after he was sacked by
the Hu-Wen leadership on March 15. It is however
understood that Zhang would fill the post only
until the 18th Party Congress.
Like Hu
Chunhua and other up-and-coming regional leaders,
Zhou has emphasized strict adherence to the
center's instructions. While he has played no part
in the campaign to resuscitate Maoism that is
associated with the disgraced Bo, Zhou has used
his status as the top official of Mao Zedong's
birthplace skillfully to gain the support of
conservative cadres who are still enamored of the
Great Helmsman.
Zhou thus has been a keen
supporter of the renewed "Learn from Lei Feng"
movement - a reference to the campaign to emulate
Lei, whom Mao lionized as a "proletariat paragon"
in the 1950s. "The quintessence of the Lei Feng
spirit will never become outdated," said Zhou in a
recent seminar. Zhou added what Lei advocated -
"loving your country and total devotion [to the
masses]" - possessed "eternal value" for Chinese.
It is significant that in the wake of the Bo
scandal, the party leadership has organized
numerous educational and propaganda drives to ask
civilian and military officials to emulate Lei
Feng's spirit of unquestioned loyalty of the
party's goals and discipline.
Despite his
proclivity toward adherence to party dogma, Zhou
seems to have more confidence than Hu Chunhua in
displaying a personal flair. A case in point was
Zhou's support to so-called "officials with
personality," a reference to unconventional cadres
who sometimes do not follow the norms of
bureaucratic politics.
For example,
several Hunan officials have attracted national
media attention through using their personal blogs
and microblogs to expose abuses in the province
that range from pollution to corruption. When
asked at an NPC press conference last month about
his views on "cadres with personality," Zhou said
"In Hunan, cadres whose behaviors and policies are
in accordance with the law and party discipline
will enjoy protection."
Zhou also was not
afraid of touching upon the sensitive question of
so-called "naked officials," or cadres whose
spouses and relatives have either gone abroad or
who possess residence rights in foreign countries.
"As for myself, I have filed all my personal data
with the [Party] Organization Department," he
indicated, "I have no 'naked official' problems".
Despite Bo's downfall - and the dent this
may have made to the clout of the Gang of
Princelings - the factional distribution of the
nine PBSC seats this autumn will probably reflect
a rough balance of power between the CYL Clique on
the one hand, and the conjoined Gang of
Princelings and the Shanghai Faction on the other.
The CYL Faction, however, enjoys a
clear-cut advantage 10 years down the road. It is
to be expected that President Hu, who is noted for
his cautious and meticulous approach to
Chinese-style power plays, will counsel Sixth
Generation CYL proteges led by Hu Chunhua and Zhou
Qiang to stick to tried-and-true formulas in their
steady but sure ascendancy to the top of the CCP
hierarchy.
Dr Willy Wo-Lap Lam
is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He
has worked in senior editorial positions in
international media including Asiaweek
newsmagazine, South China Morning Post, and the
Asia-Pacific Headquarters of CNN. He is the author
of five books on China, including the recently
published "Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era:
New Leaders, New Challenges." Lam is an Adjunct
Professor of China studies at Akita International
University, Japan, and at the Chinese University
of Hong Kong.
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