China’s president has overseen rapid economic expansion. But his elusiveness has robbed the country of a much-needed voice.
President Hu Jintao is entering what is likely to be the final 18 months of his time as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. Barring absolute disaster, (and in the world of Chinese politics the unexpected can never be discounted), some time late in 2012, probably October, he will be replaced—most likely by current Vice President Xi Jinping. We will not be seeing the last of Mr Hu, however. Since 1978 there are no second acts in Chinese politics, simply because political careers never really end. For instance Jiang Zemin, Hu’s predecessor, remains remarkably active for a man in his late 80s. From late 2012, Hu will have another 6 months as country president, and then perhaps as much as 2 more years as chair of the government and party Central Military Commission. After that, as a man just into his 70s, he could continue in any number of hidden, but immensely influential guises.
How do we assess the Hu era? It is true that the greatest achievement of the student from a modest background from Qinghua University in the 1960s, who spent the first decade of his life in the arid hinterland of China climbing up the Party tree, has been able to create consensus in a political organisation which maintains the ability to be savagely divided in its heart over some of the direction of the last three decades. Hu’s finest moment may well have been the time when he assumed power in 2002, achieving the Communist Party’s first-ever peaceful transition of power from one generation to another. Where once years of infighting and coups had been the norm Hu, with his lack of ego and quiet patience, managed to steer the Party through years of rumours of rifts with the Shanghai Band of the previous leaders and any number of other supposed threats.
On the plus side, Hu’s evident commitment to party procedure has strengthened the institutionalisation of the internal party rules. This explains his constant mantra of the importance of ‘party-building’ work. He saw China through a successful Olympics in 2008, despite some nasty moments in the run-up. He has significantly exploited the re-election of the KMT in Taiwan in 2008 by sanctioning the signing with the Taiwanese government of a major free trade deal, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, in 2010. He allowed China to take a major part in the global reaction to the economic crisis from 2008. And he presided over a country whose economy has gone rampant, putting in double-digit growth figures for most of the last decade, and increasing the size of its economy by 3 times. Finally, it looks so far as if he is going to achieve a further smooth transition of leadership from his generation to a new one. For the Communist Party Hu has been a loyal, stable and faithful servant.
But there are some big negatives. Hu came to power with Premier Wen perceived as being focussed on doing something about the big inequalities that the reform process has created. Despite all the talk in the 12th Five Year Programme which was just passed at the National People’s Congress this year, China remains a country divided between the 130 billionaires who have been created over the last decade since entry to the World Trade Organisation in 2001, and the 150 million people Wen Jiabao referred to last year who live in absolute poverty. Rural China is still the home to over half of the Chinese people. It remains as fractious, dissatisfied and contentious as it was a decade ago, the source of many of the country’s legal disputes over land, property rights and complaints against local officials. Petitions to the central government have shot up in the last decade. As a government who has stated that one of their main goals was to create a ‘harmonious society,’ China often appears anything but, and the ‘socialist countryside’ Hu talked of during the last 2007 Party Congress often seems a place riven by anger, frustration, poverty and protest.
Photo Credit: ΠΑΣΟΚ
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T E Low
Hu Jintao is the type of leader who is results first, talk later, substance prime, little flair.
He gets things done.
China’s economy has grown, more of its people have come out of poverty, it is set to move into middle income, and it will regain its rightful crown of world superpower soon.
All under his watch.
The Chinese evaluate their emperors hundreds, if not, thousands of years later. Hu Jintao will be remembered for his achievements and accomplishments.
Just like Taizong of Tang and Kangxi of Qing were remembered for theirs.
MAO ZEDONG
10% growth in china produced by the people Not the Chinese Chicken Party (CCP)
1. anyone been to china, taiwan hong kong japan know Asians love money money money..
2. Google foreign reserves in china japan korea taiwan hong kong.. money of the world in asia.
3. chicken party of china (CPC) got out of way of free market free people at work. china is Now back to be rich…
4. All people of world want to be rich rich rich..
MAO ZEDONG
HU JINTO has No legit right to be president of china..
1. No one voted for him.
2. No one voted for the CCP: chinese chicken party..
3. China is in 14th- 15h century…. jobs given secret.
4. china chinese should embarassed, ashamed… that in 2010, no one knows or voted for their president..
5. Free elections free vote for a free china in a free world….
Michael
TYTLER CYCLE
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
Andrew
Yea, history is that simple
Alexandre Carrico
Hu Jintao silence on several issues such as human rights and sino-japanese territorial rift is not necessarily bad or be seen has a sign of relative weakness.
It’s still quite difficult to make correct analysis of “who’s Hu” and how he manages political decision processes inside the Zhongnanhai, even after almost ten years of Hu’s leadership.This is not surprising.
He is not like Jiang Zemin for sure (concerning mediatic appearences), but we can say that he is “no smooth operator”. His expressionless face desguise a though decision maker capable of even after retiring to continue to pull some levers with more political punch than Jiang Zemin(after all he will be relatively young with 70 years of age).
Xi Xinping will be more mediatic, if only because of his wife’s popularity as folk singer and PLA “Major-General”.
Eventually we may extrapolate a pattern concerning mediatic performance for foreign audiences as this: Jiang Zemin (high profile) and Zhu Rongji (low/medium profile); Hu Jintao (low profile) and Wen Jiabao (high profile); Xi Xinping (high profile?) and Li Keqiang (low profile?). Time will tell as everything else when we discuss China…
Michael
HU = results over rhetoric, substance over form!!! He may not be as charismatic as democratic leaders, however, China has produced 10% economic growth under his leadership! He doesn’t need to talk because he walks the walk, unlike other leaders of developing countries who profess their country’s greatness simply because of elections.