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, succeeding Jiang Zemin in the Fourth Generation Leadership of the People's Republic of China.
Background
Hu Jintao (Hu Chin-t'ao) was born in Jiangyan, Jiangsu province. His ancestors were from Jixi, the southeastern part of Anhui province. His branch of the family migrated to Jiangyan in his grandfather's generation. Hu was a talented student in high school, excelling in such activities as singing and dancing. He was also active in the Communist Youth League. In 1964, while still a student at Beijing's Tsinghua University, Hu joined the Communist Party, just prior to the Cultural Revolution. He graduated with a degree in hydraulic engineering in 1964.
In 1965, Hu was transferred to Gansu and worked 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 the Construction Department of Gansu as a secretary. The next year he was promoted to vice senior chief. During this period, Hu met his first mentor, Song Ping, the first secretary of CCP Gansu Branch. Song appreciated Hu's talent and with Song's assistance, Hu was promoted to vice director of Construction Department in 1980.Another protege of Song, Wen Jiabao also became prominent at the same time. In 1981 Hu, along with Deng Xiaoping's daughter Deng Nan and Hu Yaobang's son Hu Deping, were trained in the Central Party School in Beijing. Hu made a good impression on Deng Nan who reported to her father. Hu Deping even invited Hu Jintao to his home and met with Hu Yaobang, who was a standing member of the politburo at that time. Hu Jintao's modesty created an impact on Hu Yaobang. In 1982, Hu was promoted to secretary of CY Gansu Division.
With his mentor Song transferred to Beijing as Minister of Organization of the CCP, and was in charge of senior cadres' recommendation, candidacy and promotion, together with Hu Yaobang and Deng's support, a bright future was lying ahead of Hu. In 1982, Hu was transferred to Beijing and appointed as secretariat of the Communist Youth League Central Committee ("CY Central"). Two years later Hu was promoted to First Secretary of CY Central. During his term in the Youth League, Hu escorted Hu Yaobang, who was General Secretary of CCP then, in visits around the country. Hu Yaobang himself was a veteran coming from the Youth League, could reminiscence his youth throgh Hu. The profound feeling between Hu Yaobang and Hu led to Hu's insistence of rehabilitation of Hu Yaobang in later years.
In 1985, Hu was transferred to Guizhou as secretary of CCP Guizhou Branch, which began his time as a provincial governor. 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 Jintao handled the local students protest carefully, whereas in Beijing similar protests resulted in Hu Yaobang's stepping down
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 liberalisation of cultural activities. When Jiang Zemin was picked by Deng to succeed Zhao Ziyang in 1989, he was regarded as a transitional figure.
Before the opening of 14th National Congress of the CPC, the paramount leaders of CCP, including Deng and Chen Yun, chose candidates for standing members of the Politburo to ensure the transition of power from the so-called second-generation CPC leaders (such as Deng) to third-generation CPC leaders such as Jiang and Li Peng. Deng also proposed that they should consider another candidate for a further future transition. Song, as Minister of Organisation, recommended Hu as an ideal candidate to Deng. As a result, then in his 50's, Hu became by far the youngest member of the then seven-member Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, and it was quite obvious that Hu would succeed Jiang as the core of fourth-generation CPC leaders. In 1993, Hu took charge of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, which oversaw day-to-day operations of the Central Committee, and the Central Party School, which was convenient for him to bring up his own proteges among senior CPC cadres. Hu was also in charge of the ideological work of the CCP. 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 the CPC in 2002, Jiang was reluctant to leave the power centre. It is widely believed that he stuffed the Politburo with members of the so-called "Shanghai Clique", including Wu Bangguo, Jia Qinglin, Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju and Li Changchun, which could ensure Jiang's control behind the stage.
Leadership
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 had 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 Jiang's clique still controlled most developing areas, Hu and Wen's measures of macroeconomic regulation faced great resistance.
The major early crisis of Hu's leadership was the outbreak of SARS in 2003. Following strong criticism of China by the World Health Organization and others for initially 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 to compromise Jiang's protege's sacking. 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.
Although Jiang Zemin, then 76, stepped down from the powerful Politburo Standing Committee to make way for a younger fourth generation of leadership led by Hu, there was speculation that Jiang Zemin would retain significant power because Hu is not associated with Jiang's Shanghai clique, to which six out of the nine new members of the all-powerful Standing Committee are linked. The 22-member Politburo is elected by the Party's central committee. Real power in Communist China lies with this committee, which works like an inner cabinet and groups together the country's most influential leaders. At the 2002 16th Party Congress, the Standing Committee was expanded to include nine members. In addition, Jiang was reelected to the post of Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, a post from which Deng Xiaoping was able to wield power from behind the scenes as paramount leader.
China has a history of fallen heirs-apparent, which many observers believe explains the caution with which outside observers have long associated Hu Jintao. China 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.
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.
One of the biggest challenges Hu faces 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 while avoiding international incidents, at the same time presiding over an unprecedented increase in Chinese nationalist sentiment.
Unlike his predecessors, Hu speaks relatively unaccented Standard Chinese (Mandarin).
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 taste for the free flow of information on internet. Blocking of websites takes place more frequently, among which include 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 in 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".
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.
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Jintao under GFDL
