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Jiang's heir apparent keeps the Americans guessing
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Special to World Tribune.com
GEOSTRATEGY-DIRECT
Monday, February 25, 2002
When President Bush made a Beijing stop during his tour of East Asia last month much attention was focused on Vice President Hu Jintao. Now that Hu is making his first visit to the United States, curiosity about the enigmatic leader is intensifying.
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Vice President Hu Jintao inspects equipment at the Chinese telecommunications firm, Goldtel.
Hu Jintao
Trips to the U.S.: None
Nickname given by young party members: "Mr. Yes"
Foreign language: Russian
Stance on Tibet and Tiannanmen: Hardline
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With the China-U.S. relationship so important to China, the U.S., and the rest of Asia, that void is extremely significant for ChinaÕs designated No. 1.
Hu is not only something of an unknown quantity in regards to ChinaÕs relations with the U.S., but despite the fact that more is known of his biographical data than most past Chinese leaders, his ideas on Chinese and world problems are something of a mystery. He has kept it that way. He is the quintessential apparatchik in the Communist system, keeping his head down, and following the Party line. And it has paid off: his rise in the Communist hierarchy has been meteoric, elected to the politburo at the age of 39, the youngest ever.
A graduate hydroelectric engineer, handsome, married to a professional with two children, Hu ø unlike Jiang and other members of the Third Generation ø never spent time abroad, in the Soviet Union, for example. In fact, last summerÕs visit was his first to Moscow. He speaks Russian, of course, and has had considerable contact with the Russians in China. But his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, ballyhooed as a meeting among two similar reticent, strong figures, was something of anti-climax. It came just after the events of 9/11 in the U.S. and the warming of relations between Moscow and Washington. That seemed to contradict the signing of new Russian-Chinese anti-hegemonic treaties aimed at the U.S., the massive delivery of Russian arms to the Chinese, and the attempt to organize a Central Asian entente to eliminate U.S. influence in that region. In fact, there seemed little content to HuÕs whole European trip ø except as a backdrop for TV films for Chinese audiences.
Some Chinese and foreign observers would like to believe Hu is a ÒliberalÓ in ChinaÕs terms. On his visit to Britain last fall, for example, he went out of his way to meet and have an informal exchange with Chinese students there. There is the speculation ø again as much hope as based on evidence ø that his very base in the Party in its youth group and the younger members of the bureaucracy automatically make him a partisan of moving toward more rapid liberalization. There are even tidbits offered the foreign press in Beijing that he believes the Chinese Communists can learn from and emulate the Western European social democratic parties. And there is the hope that his bitter experience during the Cultural Revolution when he was Òsent downÓ from Beijing to Gansu in Chinese rural and isolated west to do manual labor galvanized him against old style ÒCommunist discipline.Ó
Yet, it was Hu who presided over the brutal suppression of the Tibetan independence demonstrations in 1988-89 as the PartyÕs chief delegate in Lhassa. And only last year, he was back in Tibet to crow over Chinese ÒliberationÓ of the Himalayan region on its 50th anniversary and to reject any modification of the present regime there or any compromise with the exiled Dalai Lama. It is remembered, too, that Hu, was one of the first of the younger leaders to endorse the Tiananmen massacre. And then feigning or actually suffering from Òaltitude sicknessÓ, he rushed back to Beijing from Tibet to support for two years the powers-that-be in their suppression of any remnants of the studentsÕ democratic movement. After the bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade by American planes, Hu led the bitter recriminations and organized public demonstrations that almost got out of hand. He told a group of Party apparatchiks, "The hostile forces in the United States will never give up its attempt to subjugate China."
HuÕs loyalty appears to be as much loyalty to Jiang personally as to the Party line. [Younger Party members who have nicknames for all the Politburo members call him ÒMr. Yes.Ó] When Jiang stumbled badly last summer, publicly advocating opening of the membership of the Communist Party to ChinaÕs new business leaders including a Macao casino gambling king, and then having it thrown back in his face by the Party elders, Hu continued to rationalize JiangÕs position.
Jiang has refused to respond to questions about what he intends to do as the succession deadline approaches. There is speculation that like Deng, he might try to hang on to the chairmanship of the PartyÕs Military Commission which has been since MaoÕs time the ultimate seat of power in the regime. It could be harder for Jiang who unlike the generation before him had no military experience during the Civil War and a PeopleÕs Liberation Army caught up in modernization and restructuring. But such an arrangement could give Hu the presidency but have him continue to share power with Jiang and other older members of the Third Generation in a continuing Chinese gerontocracy.
Or Jiang could pit other younger Fourth Generation figures against Hu. If ideological issues are to play a role, Hu's longstanding familiarity with the poor regions of western ChinaÕs that have been left behind by the coastal regionÕs free market boom seem to have left him with a distrust of putting the same kind of faith in unregulated free market growth. Zeng Qinghong, deemed generally to be HuÕs most important rival, heads the Party's powerful Organization Department which handles personnel matters, and is Jiang's closest associate. He is very much a product of the transformation of Shanghai and Beijing under DengÕs pragmatic policies. But he remains a mere alternate member of the Politburo owing whatever power he has to Jiang's patronage. Still Zeng has one thing Hu lacks ø a knowledge and a close relationship with the U.S, and Americans. He accompanied Jiang to the U.S. in 1997 billed as Jiang's "chief of staffÓ and since then, U.S. officials often have funneled communications to Jiang via Zeng, bypassing the Foreign Ministry.
There is a suspicion that despite little open speculation in ChinaÕs media, not to say discussion, the behind-the-scenes struggle for succession explains much of what is happening in China on a daily basis. Some have speculated the recent reports of ÒbuggingÓ of JiangÕs refurbished aircraft [criticized as an example of corruption in some quarters] was a part of one of these succession plots, rather than a U.S.espionage ploy.
The latest anti-corruption campaign, however justified by the growing problem in the Chinese bureaucracy, is as it has been traditionally a weapon in intra-Party battles, including succession. The recent scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from the Bank of China and attributed to an official close to Prime Minister Zhu Rongi, who has announced rather too nonchalantly his intention to retire, may also be related.
HuÕs candidacy apparently remains on track for the moment. But given the history of Chinese Communist succession and his enigmatic qualities, the Bush team will likely be leaving Beijing as puzzled about the future of Chinese leadership as when they arrived. For Hu shows few signs of wanting to reach out to Washington, perhaps because he feels he must cede anything to do with U.S. policy to Jiang.
Geostrategy-Direct, www.geostrategy-direct.com, February 5, 2002
Copyright © 2002 East West Services. All rights reserved.
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