China Names Its New Leaders

BEIJING -- After months of intense speculation, China made a sweeping overhaul of its leadership today, replacing an aging crop of officials with slightly younger ones who will rule a dynamic but troubled nation beset by unemployment, corruption and political stagnation.

Vice President Hu Jintao was named general secretary of the Communist Party, a promotion to the top job that seals his rapid rise in the world’s sole remaining Communist giant. He succeeds the outgoing party chief, President Jiang Zemin, in the first orderly transfer of power in the 53-year history of the People’s Republic, one not brought on by death, purge or bloodshed.

Hu, 59, will run the world’s most populous country together with eight other men -- the new members of the party’s inner sanctum, the Politburo Standing Committee -- who were unveiled this morning in a nationally televised ceremony after secret deliberations by the Communist elite.

It was the Chinese public’s first glimpse of the collective of nine men who will steer their nation through these early years of the 21st century.

Since the summer, rumors had persisted that Jiang, China’s No. 1 leader since 1989, would try to hang on to formal power. That speculation finally ended when Hu and the other newly appointed standing committee members filed onto the stage in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People before a crowd of reporters and Chinese officials.

One by one, in a Soviet-style political ritual at odds with China’s recent economic and social liberalization, the men were introduced in descending order of rank: Hu, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju, Wu Guanzheng, Li Changchun and Luo Gan.

The nine replace the previous seven-member standing committee, a gerontocracy led by Jiang, 76, and other party stalwarts such as No. 2 leader Li Peng, 74, and Premier Zhu Rongji, 74, No. 3 in the hierarchy.

However, Jiang, Li and Zhu all have allies on the new slate who can represent their views and safeguard their interests.

With five proteges in the inner circle, Jiang especially is well positioned to wield influence from behind the scenes, at least in the near term, before Hu builds up a more solid power base and emerges into his own. It was also announced today that Jiang will continue to serve as chairman of the party’s powerful Central Military Commission, which oversees the world’s largest standing army. Jiang is expected to hand over China’s presidency to Hu in March.

As the audience applauded, China’s new crew of leaders smiled and waved for the cameras -- some stiffly, some with the look of marathon winners -- then filed off stage without fielding a single question.

Only Hu, as first among equals, spoke.

“On behalf of the newly elected central leadership, I would like to thank all the party members for their trust. We must live up to the trust of all party members and the expectations of all Chinese people,” he said, smiling amiably.

He pledged to build unity and continue developing China’s burgeoning market economy -- “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” in the official lingo.

The 20-minute ceremony was the culmination of an aggressive behind-the-scenes political derby conducted over the last several months. The final lineup was a heavily guarded secret, partly because of eleventh-hour dealing and partly to preserve the fiction that the new leaders were selected after a democratic process involving the 2,114 delegates to the 16th party congress and the 356 members of the Central Committee who met this week.

Back-Room Democracy

In truth, the outcome was determined through jockeying and horse-trading among Jiang and other members of the old guard.

Although Hu was anointed years ago for the top job by the late Deng Xiaoping, his prestige and seniority on the standing committee will be checked by the ambition and power of the other eight men -- and their patrons.

Jia, Huang, Zeng, Li and Wu Bangguo are all proteges of Jiang. Zeng, who has a reputation as a wily political operator, is particularly close to his mentor, having served as the outgoing party leader’s assistant for years.

The wider Politburo, too, contains other Jiang allies, a significant victory for a man once mocked as a political lightweight. After Deng plucked Jiang out of relative obscurity to lead China in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, many analysts had predicted that his tenure would be short-lived.

Because of Jiang’s continued influence, China will most likely stick to the agenda he formulated in conjunction with the other top leaders. That includes further liberalization of Asia’s fastest-growing economy; good relations with the U.S., the centerpiece of Jiang’s foreign policy; attempts to bring Taiwan, which China considers a rogue province, back under Beijing’s control; the continued lock on political power by the Communist Party; and an effort to broaden the party’s appeal by allowing its former enemies, private business owners, to join.

“I don’t anticipate fundamental departures from Hu Jintao, or anyone else for that matter,” said Dali Yang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Chicago. “The ideological spectrum among the elite is much narrower now. These people are not that divergent or different from each other in their goals.”

The idea of recruiting entrepreneurs into the fold, one of Jiang’s pet ideas, was written into the party charter Thursday by the congress. The party inspired by Karl Marx and Mao Tse-tung, once radically committed to empowering peasants and workers, now represents China’s “advanced productive forces,” including avowed capitalists.

“Private entrepreneurs are an important force in China’s economic construction,” said Jiang Xipei, a delegate to the party congress and head of Far East Group, one of southern Jiangsu province’s largest private companies. The firm, specializing in electric cables, cleared $242 million in sales last year.

“The Chinese Communist Party is a party that changes with the times,” he said.

Indeed, the evolution of the 66-million-member organization is evident in the biographies of the new top nine leaders.

No Workers at Top

For the first time in Communist Chinese history, not one of the inner circle is a farmer or worker, although some of the men come from humble backgrounds. Among those retiring with Jiang is No. 4 leader Li Ruihuan, a carpenter who helped build Mao’s imposing mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. Li’s departure severs the leadership’s last direct link with the party’s peasant and proletarian roots.

His exit from the scene was another victory for Jiang. At 68, the reform-minded Li, one of Jiang’s key rivals and considered by many the most liberal of the old leaders, was technically not bound to step down according to the informal cutoff age of 70 for standing committee membership. Observers say Li was either ousted through Jiang’s maneuvering or finally consented to leave because Jiang had agreed to step down as well.

The new lineup consists entirely of technocrats, starting with Hu, a hydroelectric engineer. They will need to bring all their problem-solving abilities to bear on the host of challenges facing China as it tries to catch up with the developed world.

China’s astonishing economic development of the last two decades has brought unprecedented prosperity to a significant portion of society, especially urbanites who lead increasingly sophisticated, consumer-oriented lives.

But millions of state workers and peasant farmers have been left behind in the rush to riches. Labor unrest by laid-off workers and protests by overtaxed farmers in the vast Chinese countryside are common.

China’s entry last year into the World Trade Organization is expected to deepen its market-oriented reforms but is also liable to throw even more people out of work as unprotected state enterprises go belly up.

The new regime must also deal with a looming crisis over unpaid bank loans, outstanding pensions and rising public debt.

And it has to rein in the rampant corruption that has done more than anything else to undermine faith in the Communist Party.

At this week’s congress, Jiang made a point of calling for clean government and better-quality cadres. But he unveiled no reforms that would make China’s rulers more accountable to the country’s 1.3 billion people.

As the new leader, Hu will be a lightning rod for these concerns and will have to reconcile such demands with the political interests and ambitions of his colleagues and rivals.

“He apparently is very good in terms of coordinating and interacting with colleagues. That will be to his advantage,” said Yang of the University of Chicago. “He’s younger; he’ll be very hands-on in terms of the policy agenda.”

The semi-generational shift at the pinnacle of Chinese politics was reflected in the party’s newly named elite Central Committee. The average age of its 356 members is about 55, according to the New China News Agency.

The party’s military commission, too, has jettisoned members over 70, with the notable exception of Jiang.

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New faces at apex of Chinese power

These are the new members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee.

Hu Jintao: Vice president (59): Both conservative and liberal party leaders have cultivated Hu as a promising young star since his days as a hydropower major at Qinghua University. Late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping anointed Hu to become President Jiang Zemin’s successor and lead the party’s fourth generation of leaders. Expected to take over as China’s president in March. Said to have a photographic memory.

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Wu Bangguo: Vice premier (61): Wu is a former Shanghai party secretary promoted by Jiang Zemin. He majored in radio electronics at Qinghua University, then worked as an engineer in an electronics factory in Shanghai. As vice premier, he has been in charge of state-owned industries.

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Wen Jiabao: Vice premier (60): As vice premier, Wen has been steadily increasing his portfolio of Cabinet duties, such as agriculture and finance, apparently in preparation for becoming premier in March. He assisted deposed party chief Zhao Ziyang during 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He has a graduate degree in geology.

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Jia Qinglin: Former mayor of Beijing (62): He worked with Jiang Zemin in the First Ministry of Machine Building. Jia later served as party boss in Fujian province, where his wife was implicated in the biggest smuggling scandal of the Communist era. Jia became Beijing mayor after Chen Xitong was ousted in a corruption scandal. He was trained as an engineer.

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Zeng Qinghong: Former head of party organization department (63): Zeng’s father led peasant uprisings and served as interior minister. His mother was one of the few female survivors of the Long March. Zeng’s pedigree and political skills earned him a place as Jiang Zemin’s chief of political staff, with extensive powers over internal party matters. He is the top-ranking Jiang protege on the Politburo. He has a college degree in automation.

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Huang Ju: Former mayor of Shanghai (64): Huang served as vice mayor of Shanghai under Jiang Zemin, then succeeded Zhu Rongji as Shanghai’s mayor. Shanghai bureaucrats nicknamed him “No Opinion” for his indecisiveness. He graduated from Qinghua University, majoring in electric motors. His daughter reportedly is married to a San Francisco businessman.

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Wu Guanzheng: Former governor of Jiangxi province, former party secretary of Shandong province (64): The son of peasants, he grew up herding cows and mowing hay. Wu has a postgraduate degree in thermal engineering from Qinghua University. Then-party secretary Hu Yaobang successfully nominated him to be governor of Jiangxi province.

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Li Changchun: Party secretary of Guangdong province, former governor of Liaoning and Henan provinces (58): The youngest of the group, Li also has extensive local government experience from administering China’s most populous and most prosperous provinces. He was trained as an electrical engineer.

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Luo Gan: State councilor (67): Luo studied at Karl Marx University in Leipzig, in what was then East Germany, and later specialized in metallurgy. He worked in Machine Building Ministry along with Jiang Zemin and Jia Qinglin. Luo was minister of labor under then-Premier Li Peng, who successfully nominated him to be secretary-general of the State Council. He has been in charge of internal security.

Sources: State Council Web site (www.16congress.org.cn), Times research