路透社
By Chris Buckley 1 hour, 29 minutes ago
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s ruling Communist Party unveiled on Monday a new leadership line-up, including two men likely to eventually succeed President Hu Jintao and government head Premier Wen Jiabao.
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Xi Jinping, who has been chief of Shanghai, and Li Keqiang, who has headed the northeast province of Liaoning, were promoted to the new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee — the innermost ring of power in this top-down state.
While Xi, 54, and Li, 52, have not been openly designated to replace Hu and Wen five years hence, their relative youth and status leave little doubt they are favored to eventually assume the apex of power.
“Comrades Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are two quite young comrades,” was all the carefully-spoken Hu said of them when presenting them before hundreds of reporters and flashing cameras.
Their promotions mark Hu’s growing grip on power as he sheds the residual influence of his predecessor, Jiang Zemin. But the next five years will test the Party’s power to engineer an untroubled succession in an era when no one leader commands absolute loyalty, said analysts.
“Hu’s power has emerged greatly consolidated,” said Li Datong, a former editor at a Party paper.
“I think either Xi or Li would be acceptable to Hu, but anyone now in the central leadership will be beholden to Hu above anyone else. He has his own line-up now; Jiang’s out of the picture.”
The nine men in dark suits, white shirts and red ties emerged after a closely controlled vote by the 204-member Party Central Committee, installed at the end of its five-yearly Congress on Sunday.
Xi filed into the chamber at the Great Hall of the People directly ahead of Li, but there was no clear indication of which man was favored for which top job.
“Xi came out ranked first, so that suggests that he has a bigger chance of becoming Party general secretary, but there are a lot of factors that can change in five years,” said Zhang Zuhua, a former official.
State media have stressed that Hu expects the new leadership to work together and avoid damaging rivalry.
“There must be a politically resolute, staunchly unified and energetic and promising collective central leadership,” the People’s Daily — official voice of the Party — urged on Monday.
Hu stays as Party boss — as well as President and head of the Central Military Commission — for five more years, while Wen will continuing managing the government and its ministries.
The Standing Committee retained parliament chief Wu Bangguo and two leaders installed under the previous Party chief, Jiang Zemin — Li Changchun, who has been propaganda boss, and Jia Qinglin, head of the advisory council attached to the parliament.
The line-up also includes He Guoqiang, set to take control of Party organisation and fighting corruption, and Zhou Yongkang, whose background in policing puts him in line to replace Luo Gan, the previous domestic security boss.
It was already known that three members of the outgoing Standing Committee would step down, among them Vice-President Zeng Qinghong, a powerful figure installed by Hu’s predecessor Jiang Zemin. The death of Vice-Premier Huang Ju in June left a fourth vacancy.
BALANCING INTERESTS
Analysts said the mixture of promotions — some close to Hu, others not so — reflected his bid to balance regions and interests and also limits on his power to dictate outcomes.
Li Keqiang worked under Hu in the Communist Youth League before postings in Henan, a poor and unruly rural province in central China, and Liaoning, a rustbelt province striving to attract investment and emerge as a modern manufacturing hub.
Before taking over as party boss of Shanghai earlier this year, Xi Jinping steered two of the country’s fastest-growing provinces, Fujian and Zhejiang. His father was a senior official close to the late reformer Hu Yaobang, who was a patron — but no relation — of Hu Jintao in the 1980s.
“Some have said that Xi was Jiang’s pawn, but I see no evidence of that,” said Zhang, the former official. “Xi worked his way up from the grassroots, not in Beijing, and the connection to Hu Yaobang would also count with Hu Jintao.”
But the retention of Jia was a reminder the new leadership was not Hu’s to pick and choose at will. Jia has long been dogged by claims he let corruption run rampant in coastal Fujian province in the 1990s.
At 67, Jia was young enough to escape an informal retirement rule forcing out leaders born before 1940 — a demand that apparently claimed Zeng. The rule pressing leaders who reach 68 to step down meant only Xi and Li were likely to remain in the Standing Committee after the Congress in 2012, said Zhang.
(Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck and Benjamin Kang Lim)
CNN
BEIJING, China (AP) — President Hu Jintao won a second five-year term as China’s Communist Party chief Monday, heading a new leadership lineup that features potential successors yet could invite a divisive battle to succeed him.
Chinese President Hu Jintao speaks at the 17th Communist Party Congress.
Hu’s ability to manage the new, disparate coalition will determine how united the party is in dealing with tensions over a yawning gap between rich and poor at home and managing China’s rising clout abroad so as not to anger the U.S. and other world powers.
If Hu is successful, he will be freer to boost spending on health, education and other services long-neglected in the headlong drive for economic growth. Otherwise, with his own retirement likely in five years, he could become a lame duck.
“Hu Jintao is a brilliant politician,” said Cheng Li, a watcher of Chinese politics at Washington’s Brookings Institution. But managing the new leadership “is a serious test.”
Overall, Hu emerged politically stronger from eight days of high-level political meetings and months of bargaining in the lead-up. A party congress that wrapped up Sunday endorsed Hu’s signature policy program to help the poor and saw the retirement of a key rival. A Central Committee meeting Monday elevated a Hu protege, Li Keqiang, into the leadership.
“We are fully aware of our difficult tasks and great responsibilities,” Hu told reporters Monday as he introduced the new nine-man Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s most powerful body.
Yet the deals Hu struck became clearer with the inauguration of the new lineup of five holdovers from the last leadership and four newcomers. Key positions that oversee law enforcement and internal party investigations were given to associates of his rivals. Another younger politician and potential competitor to Li was also promoted.
In the months ahead, a crucial sign of the coalition’s stability will be the relationship between the leadership’s youngest members: Hu’s protege of 20 years since their days in the Communist Youth League, the 52-year-old Li, and 54-year-old Xi Jinping, Shanghai’s party secretary.
The son of a politically influential veteran revolutionary, Xi is less beholden to Hu and emerged in recent weeks as a compromise candidate for leaders who feared giving Hu too much sway.
In many respects, Xi and Li represent different camps, with Li identified with Hu’s supporters drawn partly from the youth league, and Xi with the traditional party elite and more prosperous coastal provinces.
Should the competition between Xi and Li get beyond Hu’s control, “he’ll be blamed,” said Li, the politics watcher.
The announcement of a new leadership lineup marks the end of months of often contentious in-house bargaining over high-level posts that saw Hu purge one Politburo member who had criticized Beijing’s policies.
Hu gained a significant edge Sunday with the retirement of Vice President Zeng Qinghong, a seasoned infighter, and two other members from the leadership.
Closing out a weeklong congress, the more than 2,200 delegates — national and provincial political and military elite — also endorsed amending the party’s charter to include Hu’s pet policy program, the “scientific outlook on development.” The program attempts to channel China’s boisterous growth to better benefit rural areas, low-wage workers and migrants left out of the economic boom of recent years.
The policy shift and rhetoric to help the disadvantaged have made Hu and his Premier Wen Jiabao popular with ordinary Chinese, a useful advantage in political wrangling. Wen, ranked No. 3 in the party hierarchy, also stayed in the leadership for a second term, as did the legislature’s chairman and party’s No. 2 Wu Bangguo.
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Despite his departure, Zeng’s influence is certain to linger. A friend from their days in the oil ministry, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang, was given a leadership post in charge of law enforcement. Another protege, He Guoqiang, who recently handled personnel issues was put in charge of the party’s internal anti-corruption Central Discipline Inspection Committee.
In another sign of Zeng’s lingering influence, an ally, Jia Qinglin, kept his leadership slot, despite being tainted by a smuggling and corruption scandal.
美联社
BEIJING – President Hu Jintao won a second five-year term as China’s Communist Party chief Monday, heading a new leadership lineup that features potential successors yet could invite a divisive battle to succeed him.
ADVERTISEMENT
Hu’s ability to manage the new, disparate coalition will determine how united the party is in dealing with tensions over a yawning gap between rich and poor at home and managing China’s rising clout abroad so as not to anger the U.S. and other world powers.
If Hu is successful, he will be freer to boost spending on health, education and other services long-neglected in the headlong drive for economic growth. Otherwise, with his own retirement likely in five years, he could become a lame duck.
“Hu Jintao is a brilliant politician,” said Cheng Li, a watcher of Chinese politics at Washington’s Brookings Institution. But managing the new leadership “is a serious test.”
Overall, Hu emerged politically stronger from eight days of high-level political meetings and months of bargaining in the lead-up. A party congress that wrapped up Sunday endorsed Hu’s signature policy program to help the poor and saw the retirement of a key rival. A Central Committee meeting Monday elevated a Hu protege, Li Keqiang, into the leadership.
“We are keenly aware of our difficult tasks and great responsibilities,” Hu told reporters Monday as he introduced the new nine-man Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s most powerful body.
Yet the deals Hu struck became clearer with the inauguration of the new lineup of five holdovers from the last leadership and four newcomers. Key positions that oversee law enforcement and internal party investigations were given to associates of his rivals. Another younger politician and potential competitor to Li was also promoted.
In the months ahead, a crucial sign of the coalition’s stability will be the relationship between the leadership’s youngest members: Hu’s protege of 20 years since their days in the Communist Youth League, the 52-year-old Li, and 54-year-old Xi Jinping, Shanghai’s party secretary.
The son of a politically influential veteran revolutionary, Xi is less beholden to Hu and emerged in recent weeks as a compromise candidate for leaders who feared giving Hu too much sway.
In many respects, Xi and Li represent different camps, with Li identified with Hu’s supporters drawn partly from the youth league, and Xi with the traditional party elite and more prosperous coastal provinces.
Should the competition between Xi and Li get beyond Hu’s control, “he’ll be blamed,” said Li, the politics watcher.
The announcement of a new leadership lineup marks the end of months of often contentious in-house bargaining over high-level posts that saw Hu purge one Politburo member who had criticized Beijing’s policies.
Hu gained a significant edge Sunday with the retirement of Vice President Zeng Qinghong, a seasoned infighter, and two other members from the leadership.
Closing out a weeklong congress, the more than 2,200 delegates — national and provincial political and military elite — also endorsed amending the party’s charter to include Hu’s pet policy program, the “scientific outlook on development.” The program attempts to channel China’s boisterous growth to better benefit rural areas, low-wage workers and migrants left out of the economic boom of recent years.
The policy shift and rhetoric to help the disadvantaged have made Hu and his Premier Wen Jiabao popular with ordinary Chinese, a useful advantage in political wrangling. Wen, ranked No. 3 in the party hierarchy, also stayed in the leadership for a second term, as did the legislature’s chairman and party’s No. 2 Wu Bangguo.
Despite his departure, Zeng’s influence is certain to linger. A friend from their days in the oil ministry, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang, was given a leadership post in charge of law enforcement. Another protege, He Guoqiang, who recently handled personnel issues was put in charge of the party’s internal anti-corruption Central Discipline Inspection Committee.
In another sign of Zeng’s lingering influence, an ally, Jia Qinglin, kept his leadership slot, despite being tainted by a smuggling and corruption scandal.
法新社
BEIJING (AFP) – Chinese President Hu Jintao was on Monday named as head of the ruling Communist Party for a second term, an endorsement for him to lead the country for five more years.
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Hu, 64, was named as party general secretary and head of the elite Standing Committee of the Politburo, which is the most powerful political body in the country.
“We are keenly aware of our difficult task and grave responsibilities,” Hu told reporters as the new leadership team appeared before the press.
“We will do our best to be worthy of the great trust the entire membership places in us.”
Hu was also re-named by the Central Committee to a second term as chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission, China’s top military post.
The reappointments are seen as further institutionalising the party’s leadership transition mechanism, which was often torn by in-fighting.
Since Hu’s predecessor Jiang Zemin came to power following the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests, the party has sought to guarantee two five-year terms for top leaders.
Following his re-appointments as head of the party and military, Hu is widely expected to receive a second term as state president when parliament meets in March next year.