Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders, New Challenges

New Leaders, New Challenges

Willy Lam

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315497396
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Negotiation

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with top Chinese officials, parliamentarians, scholars, and businessmen, Willy Lam, a renowned journalist and writer on Chinese affairs, presents a first-hand, multi-dimensional account of twenty-first century China and the impact of fourth generation leaders, including President Hu Jinato and Premier Wen Jiabao. Lam goes behind the glitzy facade of nouveau-riche Beijing and Shanghai to examine how the Hu leadership has tried to extend the Communist Party's "mandate of heaven" by tackling an array of daunting problems: the weakening legitimacy of the Party's leadership; restive peasants; angry workers; political stagnation over the lack of reform; foreign relations difficulties; unreliable energy supplies; resurgent nationalism; and the increasingly dubious "Chinese model" of development. The author assesses possible contributions that the new classes of private businessmen, professionals, and intellectuals - as well as new ideas such as nationalism, globalization, and federalism - will make to economic prosperity and political liberalization. The book also includes a chapter on foreign policy, which contains an insightful account of Beijing's evolving and sometimes difficult relations with the United States, Europe, Japan, and other major countries and blocs, as well as the role of the People's Liberation Army.

1
Introduction

The Rise of Hu Jintao and the Traits of the Fourth-Generation Leadership

Great Expectations for the Hu Jintao Administration

China—and the world—had great expectations of the Fourth-Generation leadership that was ushered into place at the Sixteenth Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress in November 2002. While the nation, or at least its “gold coast,” had largely prospered during the thirteen-year stewardship of ex-president Jiang Zemin, the Shanghaibang (Shanghai Faction) honcho did not exactly impress domestic or foreign observers with his visionary statecraft or commitment to thoroughgoing reform. Moreover, there was evidence from 2000 onward that Jiang and his Shanghaibang protégés such as Zeng Qinghong were more concerned with holding onto power than pushing forward with reform. This was fully demonstrated by Jiang’s refusing to yield perhaps his most important post—chairman of the policy-setting Central Military Commission (CMC) at the end of the congress.¹

It is fair to say that Chinese, particularly the intelligentsia, have projected their hopes about an enlightened, pro-reform CCP on two relatively young leaders who acceded to the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) at the congress: Hu Jintao, who was made CCP general secretary, and Wen Jiabao, premier-designate. Neither Hu nor Wen (both born in 1942) are members of the Shanghai Faction, which has pretty much overstayed its welcome at least in the eyes of cadres and residents outside of the Greater Shanghai Region. And despite subsequent—and largely unconfirmed—rumors about the business dealings of their children, both Hu and Wen have a well-deserved reputation as Mr. Clean.

This chapter will trace the rise of Hu from his humble origins as a political instructor at Tsinghua University and later a hydraulic engineer in remote Gansu Province. Circumstances that prompted Hu’s meteoric rise—particularly his close ties with patrons Song Ping and late party chief Hu Yaobang, as well as his “resolute” suppression of the Lhasa riots of 1989—will be examined in detail. Focus will also be put on the difficult relationship between Hu and his immediate predecessor, ex-president Jiang, as well as the power struggle between Jiang’s Shanghai Faction and Hu’s own Communist Youth League Faction.

Particular attention will be paid to how the president’s experience and exposure has shaped his worldview and political philosophy. While Hu’s decades of training as a political functionary and commissar have inculcated in him a respect for socialist orthodoxy, he also seems to attach a lot of importance to the CCP making necessary adaptations to meet the challenges of the new century. The careers and political orientations of other Fourth-Generation cadres such as Wen, as well as members of the Shanghai Faction and “Gang of Princelings,” will be analyzed. The chapter will end by asking the overwhelming question of whether China under a Hu administration will make bold departures, particularly in political, structural, and institutional reforms.

Hu’s Meteoric Rise and His Power Base

Hu’s Humble Beginnings

It was clear from the outset that Jiang and Hu had radically different personalities, styles, and philosophies. Ex-president Jiang had an expansive—his critics would even say buffoon-like—style. He liked to sing karaoke—and his repertoire ranges from Elvis Presley love songs to the classical aria “O Sole Mio.” Jiang made international headlines while singing this aria together with Pavarotti during the maestro’s visit to Beijing in 2001. Hu is polite and correct—but hardly effusive—in public. Yet Hu—the putative “core” of the disidai or Fourth-Generation leadership—is known to be an accomplished dancer, at least in his younger days. While a Communist Youth League (CYL) instructor at Tsinghua University, he was a star in song-and-dance troupes at that elite institute of higher learning. It was also his fancy footwork that reportedly helped him win the favor of classmate Liu Yongqing, who would later become Mrs. Hu. And until his emergence as party general secretary at the Sixteenth Congress, Hu mainly preserved his helmsman-in-waiting status by dancing to Jiang’s music.²

Indeed, one of the characteristics of Hu—and to some extent, Wen Jiabao, who was named premier in March 2003—was his willingness to prance and gyrate to the tune of party elders or top honchos. Hu’s numerous patrons included the governor of Gansu Province in the early 1970s, Li Dengying; “Godfather of Gansu Province” Song Ping; former party chief Hu Yaobang; late patriarch Deng Xiaoping; and to some extent, even Jiang. The ability to play the role of faithful understudy—and an unusual knack for avoiding mistakes—helped propel Hu to the very top. Yet these qualities might not help him spin out bold visions for running the party or country.

It is not for nothing that many Western observers have this standard joke about Hu Jintao: “Who’s Hu?” or “Hu’s on top?” Hu’s enigmatic persona began with his birthplace. The Fourth-Generation stalwart’s official biographies said he was born in Jixi County, Anhui Province, a rural township that had produced a number of senior officials and literary figures. They included modern China’s great philosopher and writer, Dr. Hu Shih—“China’s Bertrand Russell.” The truth, however, is that while the ancestors of the Hu family had hailed from Jixi, his forebears left the place about 180 years ago. Hu was actually born in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, where he attended primary and secondary schools. Hu has been reluctant to point to his connection with Taizhou for various reasons. Taizhou is only a stone’s throw from Yangzhou, the hometown of Jiang Zemin; it is also close to the home village of another Politburo Standing Committee member of the 1990s, former vice-premier Li Lanqing. For Hu to list his hometown as Taizhou, Jiangsu, would give rise to criticism that too many present-day leaders hail from the same part of China.³

Hu’s family was not well off: his father—who did not attend university—and mother were humble teachers. However, his grandfather and great-grandfather were tea merchants—and according to Communist Chinese “blood-line” theories, Hu should have been classified a capitalist or at least the descendant of a capitalist clan. Luckily, Hu’s nonproletariat background did not stand in the way of his getting into Tsinghua University—usually referred to as China’s MIT—in 1959, partly because he did so well at school. There can be little doubt about Hu’s above-average IQ: he has a photographic memory that became evident in his high school days. After gaining national prominence in 1992, he has impressed foreign guests mostly by being able to deliver long speeches or cite complicated data without referring to “prompt notes.”

Hu’s four years at Tsinghua University coincided with the worst famine in Chinese history, in which more than 10 million people starved to death. Food available at the elite university was minimal and Hu lived in a spartan dormitory with four other students. At that time hydraulic engineering was all the rage because of the call for building better and stronger infrastructure for the new China; and so Hu enrolled in this subject. His first patrons were the top administrators in Tsinghua, including President Jiang Nanxiang. This enabled him to be inducted into the CYL and also to have a good citation—a “red and expert youth”—written in his dossiers when he became a party member in college. After graduation in 1964, just two years before the start of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Hu stayed behind in Tsinghua as a political instructor. There is no record of his becoming excessively involved in the internecine bickering—sometimes even physical combat—among factions in the famous university. However, as a political instructor he was identified with the discredited establishment of college bureaucrats. And the young Hu was bitterly unhappy, particularly during the first, violent phase of the Cultural Revolution.⁴

At the end of 1968, Hu was recruited by the Ministry of Hydraulic Engineering. The young engineer was sent to “learn from the masses” in poor northwestern Gansu Province, where he assumed positions as technician, secretary, and head of lower-level party cells in various hydraulic stations along the upper reaches of the Yellow River. Hu was to stay in Gansu for fourteen years. Of course, he had little choice at the time and was probably glad to be away from the centers of power struggles during the Cultural Revolution. Hu did not know at that time that he had made a superb career move. Given the poverty and remoteness of Gansu, it is surprising that a good number of top cadres first earned their spurs there. Among current Politburo members they include Premier Wen Jiabao and “strongwoman” Vice-Premier Wu Yi. For Hu, the only consolation during that period was that his girlfriend Liu was also in Gansu—and they were married in 1970. The Hus were given a tiny apartment and they had to share a kitchen and toilet with other families living along the same corridor. Mrs. Hu gave birth to a son in 1971 and a daughter in 1972.⁵

Hu’s reputation as both red (meaning politically reliable) and expert stood him in good stead. In 1973, the young man left the hydraulic stations and became a bureaucrat at the provincial Construction Commission, which was in charge of infrastructure projects, construction materials, and energy. Hu’s big break came in 1980, when he rose to become a vice-chief of the Gansu Construction Commission. This was a senior position for a thirty-eight-year-old cadre, equivalent to a deputy head of department in a central-level ministry. Hu’s main patron was Governor Li Dengying, who was a wartime comrade of the uncle of Mrs. Hu’s.

Hu also benefited from his substantial—though relatively indirect—connection with Song Ping, then party secretary of Gansu. Song was also a graduate of Tsinghua; and Song’s wife was a senior party official at Tsinghua when Hu was studying there. Hu, then a student CYL leader and political instructor, impressed Song’s wife with his good grades and political zeal. Song became a member of the Politburo Standing Committee in 1989 and his influence in high-level politics remained until the early 2000s. Song is a conservative who is opposed to market reforms, and he and his wife helped instill in Hu a firm belief in the imperative of party supremacy. Song’s influence on Hu has also been demonstrated by the number of cadres who have become the latter’s allies. For example, Premier Wen (see following section), who also spent the first part of his career in Gansu, benefited from Song’s patronage. And Zhang Xuezhong, the current party boss of Sichuan Province, served as one of Hu’s deputies during the latter’s stewardship of Tibet. Zhang had earlier been a personal secretary of Song Ping’s.⁶

Compared to his immediate forebears—including Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, both of whom were relative late bloomers—Hu had a series of lucky breaks early in his career. Another big opportunity awaited Hu in 1981, when he was sent for one year’s training at the Central Party School. By sheer luck, the young turk was put in the same class as Hu Deping, the ultra-liberal son of Hu Yaobang, who was to become party chief in 1982. Thanks to the introduction of Hu Deping, Hu Jintao got to know the party chief—perhaps his biggest patron—quite well. And owing to Hu Yaobang’s recommendation, Hu returned to Gansu as head of the provincial CYL—and he became a rising star not only in Gansu but nationally.⁷

Briefly afterward, in 1982, Hu was appointed a secretary of the national CYL party committee, a vice-ministerial position. After fourteen years, the Tsinghua graduate finally moved back to the comforts—and opportunities—of the capital. Just four years previously, Deng had unseated the Gang of Four and kicked off the open-door policy. Thanks to Hu Yaobang’s patronage, Hu became First Secretary of the CYL party committee in 1984. He had assumed a ministerial-level position at the tender age of forty-two—one of the youngest ministerial-level cadres in the post–Cultural Revolution era. For such a bright young man, the sky was the limit.

While at the league, Hu also got on good terms with Hu Qili, another former CYL chief who later became Politburo Standing Committee member in charge of ideology. The Three Hus—Hu Yaobang, Hu Qili, and Hu Jintao—were considered a liberalizing influence in Chinese politics. While Hu spent no more than three years at the CYL, it was a vital opportunity for him to gain access to the vast talent pool that the league represented. For the first time, Hu was able to build up a national network of fellow cadres and intellectuals: many of his friends and associates of that time became important members of the Hu Jintao or CYL Faction, which coalesced in the mid-1990s. Also at the CYL, Hu became universally known as a polite, courteous young cadre who did not put on airs and who was friendly to young men and women who were carving out their careers in the capital.⁸

To prepare Hu for a major promotion, Hu Yaobang sent his protégé in 1985 to another poor province, Guizhou, to gather more regional experience. At the Chinese New Year in early 1986, Hu Yaobang showed his concern for the younger Hu by spending Spring Festival in Guiyang, capital of the province. Again, fate—and circumstances—was kind to Hu Jintao, who stayed in the province until 1998. If he had remained in the capital, the hotshot cadre might have been badly hit by the disgrace of his mentor Hu Yaobang, who was ousted in January 1987 for failing to properly handle the student movement a month earlier.

While in Guizhou, Hu Jintao did his best to improve the economy of the land-locked province. He personally visited the eighty-six counties and cities in the province, thus earning the nickname the “walking map of Guizhou.” The young party boss was also praised for his willingness to talk to—and empathize with—junior cadres as well as ordinary peasants. However, local officials were sometimes frustrated with Hu’s unwillingness to give his own views on policy matters. They used the expression dishui bulou—a reference to a container that is so airtight not even a drop of water can leak—to describe the tight-lipped senior cadre. Guizhou folks said then that they still preferred Hu’s predecessor Zhu Houze, another protégé of Hu Yaobang’s. During Hu Yaobang’s tenure as general secretary, Zhu was head of the Propaganda Department—and he played a big role in liberalizing party ideology as well as lifting the party’s straitjacket on the media and the arts. While Hu was deemed an honest, noncorrupt cadre, he conscientiously toed the line from Beijing. Zhu, on the other hand, was noted for his originality of thinking and willingness to consider measures more liberal than those recommended by the central party authorities.⁹

Deng’s “Hu Yaobang Complex”: How Hu Became the Heir Apparent

Why was Hu designated a potential “core” of the Fourth-Generation leadership in 1992, when the unheralded cadre surprised practically all China watchers by being inducted into the Politburo Standing Committee? The roots of Hu’s rise to real prominence lay in his transfer to Tibet in late 1988. In itself, the move to the poor western province was not a good omen for any cadre’s rise to the top. If Hu’s star had been ascending at that time, he would have been posted to a rich coastal province such as Jiangsu or Guangdong, given that he had already served long years in hard-scrabble Gansu and Guizhou. Immediately after Hu Yaobang’s downfall in January 1987, Hu enraged a number of party elders, particularly Bo Yibo, by refusing to join in an all-out critique of his former boss. So his transfer to destitute Tibet was in a sense a punishment if not demotion.¹⁰

Moreover, the young party secretary was to have a hot potato on his hands. Lhasa and other Tibetan cities had by late 1986 already been simmering with unrest and even small-scale anti–Han Chinese demonstrations. A few months before Hu’s transfer to Lhasa, Beijing decided to defuse the time bomb by sending the revered Panchen Lama—the second most important religious figure in Tibet after the Dalai Lama—back to his homeland. The Panchen Lama had long been faithful to Beijing, and the CCP authorities hoped his return to Tibet would help stabilize the situation. Unfortunately for Beijing—and for Hu—the Panchen Lama suffered a heart attack while preaching and died in January 1989. The situation began to get out of hand. Anti–Han Chinese sentiments culminated in a bloody insurrection on March 5.¹¹

Hu was flabbergasted—but very soon decided he had no choice but to act tough. The party boss was concurrently political commissar of the Tibet People’s Liberation Army (PLA) District and the Tibet People’s Armed Police (PAP) District. Hu ordered the police and PAP officers to restor...