Hu Jintao

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

**Hu Jintao**

Hanyu Pinyin	Hú Jǐntāo
Wade-Giles	Hu Chin-t'ao
Simplified Chinese	胡锦涛
Traditional Chinese	胡錦濤
Family name	Hu
Order:	4th President
Term of Office:	March 15, 2003 - present
Predecessor:	Jiang Zemin
Successor:	incumbent
Date of Birth:	December 21, 1942
Place of Birth:	Jiangyan, Jiangsu, China
Wife:	Liu Yongqing
Political Party:	Communist Party of China
Party Order:	1st member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China
Premier:	Wen Jiabao

Hú Jǐntāo (born December 21, 1942) is the fourth and current President of the People's Republic of China and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.

1 Background
2 Leadership
3 Viewpoints
4 Offices held
5 External links

[edit]

Background

Hu was born in Jiangyan, Jiangsu province. His ancestors lived in Jixi, the southeastern part of Anhui province. Since his grandfather this branch of his family immigrated to Jiangyan and lived there ever since. Hu was a talented student in high school, excelling in such activities as singing and dancing. He was also active in the Communist Youth Group. Hu joined the Communist Party prior to the Cultural Revolution in 1964 while still a student at Beijing's Tsinghua University. He graduated with a degree in hydraulics engineering in 1964. During the Cultural Revolution, Hu's father was tortured and died in Jiangyan.And there is a popular saying when the Cultural Revolution was over, Hu came to his hometown asking local officials to facilitate the rehabilitation for his father, these bureaucrats turned his request down and refused to attend the banquet Hu arranged, which must greatly make Hu irritated and he seldom mentioned his native place as Jiangsu , replacing it with Anhui in his resume from then on . After graduation Hu had became an assistant of the university and worked for it from 1965-1968.As the Cultural Revolution stormed the whole China, Hu could not keep himself away from this incident. During which Deng Pufang, the eldest son of Deng Xiaoping , a student of Tsinghua University too,was persucted by the insurrectionists as collateral damage. Deng was kept in custody in a room full of radioactive materials. Deng knew this might kill him and had to jump out of the window. As a result, Deng was paralised and lied on the ground waiting for help.But nobody dared to give him a hand. When Hu passed by and witnessed this, he knew about the situation and escorted Deng to hospital, which saved Deng's life albeit Deng was handicapped for the rest of his life.This incident must greatly impress Deng Xiaoping, who later made great contribution to Hu's promotion.

In 1968 Hu was transferred to Gansu and work for a hydro power station under Mao Zedong's policy of Youth Going To The Mountains and Rural Areas.From 1969-1974 Hu worked for Sinohydro Engineering Bureau No 4 , as an engineer. In 1974 Hu was transferred to Construction Department of Gansu as a secretary. The next year he was promoted as vice senior chief. During this period, Hu met his first mentor,Song Ping, the first secertary of CCP Gansu Division. Song appreciated Hu's talent and with Song's effort , Hu was promoted to vice director of Construction Department in 1980.Another protege of Song, Wen Jiabao got prominence at the same period. In 1981 Hu was trained in the Central Party School in Beijing, Deng's daughter Deng Nan was in the same class. Hu gave her good impression too, which might be reported to Deng himself.In 1982 Hu was promoted to secretary of CY Gau Division.

With his mentor Song transferred to Beijing as Minister of Organization of CCP who was in charge of senior cadres' recommendation, candidacy and promotion, a bright futrue was lying ahead of Hu.In 1982 Hu was transferred to Beijing and appointed as secretariat of Central CY. Two years later Hu was promoted to First Secretary of Central CY.

In 1985, Hu was transferred to Guizhou as secretary of CCP Guizhou Division,which began his era as a viceroy governing a province.In contrast to the members of the "Shanghai clique", Hu spent most of his career in China's poorer hinterland rather than in the economically prosperous coastal regions. Partly because of this, he was little known by Western analysts before his ascent to power. In 1987 Hu handled with the students protest carefully, which in Beijing resulted in Hu Yaobang's stepdown.

As Party Secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region from 1988 to 1992, Hu was responsible for a political crackdown in early 1989 that lead to the deaths of several Tibetan activists. He also worked towards some liberalization of cultural activities. when Jiang Zemin was picked up by Deng to succeed Zhao Ziyang in 1989, he was regarded as a transitional figure.Thus, before the opening of 14th National Congress of CCP, the paramount leaders of CCP such as Deng and Chen Yun made decision on the list of candidates for standing members of politburo, which to ensure the transition of power from the so-called second generation CCP leaders such as Deng to third generation CCP leaders such as Jiang and Li Peng. Deng proposed they consider some guy for the further future transition.Song, as Minister of Organization , recommended Hu as ideal candidate to Deng. As a result,in his 50's, Hu was by far the youngest member of the then seven-member Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China,and it was quite obviously Hu would succeed Jiang as the core of 4th generation CCP leaders. From 1993, Hu took the position of secretariat of CCP Center which took daily run of CCP center, president of Central Party School, which was convenient for him to bring up his own proteges among senior CCP cadres.Hu was in charge of the ideology work of CCP too.Although Hu was destined to succeed Jiang, he shed spotlights on Jiang carefully and never tried to steal Jiang's show.When the transition finally took place in the 16th National Congress of CCP in 2002, Jiang was reluctant to leave the power center. He stuffed the politburo with his Shanghai Clique such as Wu Bangguo,Jia Qinglin,Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju and Li Changchun, which could ensure Jiang to keep control behind the stage.

The biggest challenge Hu facing is the big inequality between Chinese rich and poor,for which discontent and anger mounted to a degree wreaking havoc on CCP's reign.Furthermore, the cronyism and corruption plaguing China can drag China into deep crisis too.Also it remains to be seen if Hu is capable of managing the continued peaceful development of China without provoking international incident, while at the same time presiding over a unprecedented increase in Chinese nationalist sentiment.

[edit]

Leadership

Jiang Zemin with Hu Jintao

Since taking over as Party General Secretary at the Sixteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao has appeared to have a more egalitarian style than his predecessor. Hu and his premier Wen had proposed to set up a Harmony Society which aims at lessening the inequality and changing the style of GDP first and Welfare Second.They has focused on sectors of the Chinese population that have been left behind by the economic reform, and has taken a number of high profile trips to the poorer areas of China with the stated goal of understanding these areas better. Hu and Wen Jiabao have also attempted to move China away from a policy of favouring economic growth at all costs and toward a more balanced view of growth that includes factors in social inequality and environmental damage, including the use of the green gross domestic product in personnel decisions. But with Jiang and his clique still controlled most developing areas, Hu and Wen's measures of macroecnomic regulation faced great resistance.

The major early crisis of Hu's leadership was the outbreak of SARSin 2003. Following strong criticism of China by the World Health Organization and others for covering up and responding slowly to the crisis, he sacked several party and government officials, including the health minister ,who was Jiang's protege and the mayor of Beijing, who was Hu's protege for Hu having to sacrifice him for compromise .Hu and Wen took steps to increase the transparency of China's reporting to international health organizations.

Another test of Hu's leadership was Beijing's low key response to protests against the implementation of Article 23 of the Basic Law in Hong Kong in 2003. In an unprecedented move, the legislation to implement the Article was withdrawn by the Hong Kong government, after a large popular protest on July 1, 2003. At the same time, Hu gave a public show of support to Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa after gauging public mood in Hong Kong. Many observers see the Central Government's handling of the situation as characteristic of Hu's quiet style, and unlike Tung Chee-Hwa, Hu remains a popular figure in Hong Kong.

China has a history of fallen heirs-apparent, which many observers believe explains the caution with which outside observers have long associated Hu Jintao. The PRC has been plagued with succession problems, with elder cadres, such as Deng Xiaoping, wielding behind the scenes power through younger protégés. Deng was able to anoint three party secretaries, and was instrumental in the ousting of two of them, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. His third and final selection, Jiang Zemin, won Deng's continued backing and was the only party secretary in Communist Chinese history to voluntarily leave his post when his term ended. Even Deng himself fell from grace as party general secretary (not the top communist post during that time) in the 1950s due to his indifferent support for Maoist economic policies.

At the same time, attempts to draw historical parallels need to be carefully considered. Since the early-1980s, the People's Republic of China has been marked by increasing institutionalization and rule has been de-personalized. In reaction to the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party of China has had as one of its major goals, the creation of an orderly system of succession and mechanism to prevent informal rule and a cult of personality.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva meeting with Hu Jintao in Beijing's Great Hall of the People on May 24, 2004

However, speculations around the political rivalry between Jiang and Hu largely subsided when Jiang resigned as Chairman of the Central Military Commission in September 2004, his last official post. Hu succeeded Jiang as the Chairman of CMC and thus gaining effective control over the state, the party, as well as the army. With all power controlled by Hu at least in name, Hu could replace Jiang's Shanghai Clique with his own CY Clique step by step, among which Li Keqiang, Li Yuanchao, Liu Qibao, Zhang Baoshun,Yuan Chunqing would take more important positions sooner or later.

[edit]

Viewpoints

Observers indicate that Hu distinguishes himself from his predecessor in both domestic and foreign policy. In domestic policy, he seems to want more openness to the public on governmental functions and meetings. Recently, China's news agency published many Politburo Standing Committee meeting details. He also cancelled many spendthrift events that are traditionally seen as communist extravagances, such as the lavish send-off and welcoming-back ceremonies of Chinese leaders when visiting foreign lands. Furthermore the Chinese leadership under Hu has also focused on such problems as the gap between rich and poor and uneven development between the interior and coastal regions. Both party and state seem to have moved away from a definition of development that focuses solely on GDP growth and toward a more balanced definition which includes social equality and environment effects.

In 2004, Hu ordered all cadres from the five major power functions to stop going to the Beidaihe retreat for their annual summer meeting which, before, was commonly seen as a gathering of ruling elites from both current and elder cadres to decide China's destiny. In foreign policy, he has differed from his predecessor by actively engaging in the current North Korea nuclear crisis. He has also assured neighbors in the region with the concept of China's peaceful rise.

At the same time, Hu has contradicted some initial expectations that he was a closet liberal. Hu was a pragmatist and hard-liner as far as any effort of political reform is concerned. Observers have noted that under Hu, censorship of the news media and harassment of dissidents has increased and turned severer and more frequent than his predecessor. Although his son-in-law, Mao Daolin used to be CEO of Sina.com, a famous portal of China, Hu obviously has no appetite for the free flow of information on internet.Blocking of websites takes place more frequently, among which even include neutral and objective websites such as nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com and wikipedia.Furthermore, while Hu has attempted to make decision making more transparent and to increase rule of law he has also explicitly stated that his goal is to strengthen and make the party more efficient rather than weaken the party or move toward a pluralistic political system. In December 2004, the Hong Kong magazine Open quoted an alleged instruction by Hu to propaganda officials from September in which he wrote that, when managing ideology, China had to learn from Cuba and North Korea. Although North Korea had encountered temporary economic problems, its political policies were consistently correct. Open also quoted Hu as calling Mikhail Gorbachev a "betrayer of socialism".In respect of mass corruption and cronyism, Hu had no idea of real democracy reform of free election and speech, he applied the measure of mass movement such as Keeping the Advantage of CCP Members instead, which try to improve the governance of CCP by way of spiritual force.But the question is , in a world of people preferring fortune and power to everything else,does a spiritual force really work?

While Hu Jintao has given some signs of being more flexible with regard to political relationships with Taiwan as in his May 17 Statement, he appears to be unwilling to reconsider Chinese reunification as an ultimate goal or to renounce the use of force if Taiwan were to declare independence. The combination of both soft and hard approaches were apparent in the Anti-Secession Law which was passed in March 2005 and in the unprecedented meeting between Hu and Kuomintang leader Lien Chan in April 2005.

[edit]

Offices held

Preceded by: Jiang Zemin	General Secretary of the Communist Party of China 2002–present	Succeeded by: (n/a: incumbent)
	President of the People's Republic of China 2002–present
	Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the CPC 2004–present
	Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the PRC 2005–present