CHINA: China's ruling Communist Party unveils a new leadership line-up

China's ruling Communist Party unveils a new leadership line-up, including two men likely to succeed President Hu Jintao and government head Premier Wen Jiabao. China's ruling Communist Party unveiled a new leadership line-up on Monday (October 22). It includes two men widely expected to eventually succeed President Hu Jintao and government head Premier Wen Jiabao. Xi Jinping, who has been chief of Shanghai, and Li Keqiang, who has headed the northeast province of Liaoning, were promoted to the new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee. While Xi, 54, and Li, 52, have not been openly designated to replace Hu and Wen in five years time, their relative youth and status leave little doubt they are favoured to eventually assume the apex of power. They will inherit a nation with some 1.4 billion people, including restive peasants and a maturing middle class, an increasingly open and market-driven economy likely to be the world's third largest and a one-party state that claims loyalty to Marxism while it embraces capitalism. Their rise mark Hu's growing grip on power as he sheds the residual influence of his predecessor, Jiang Zemin. But the next five years will test Hu's power to engineer an untroubled succession in an era when no one leader commands absolute loyalty. Hu expressed his gratitude to all the party members for trusting in the new committee to lead the country. The nine men in dark suits, white shirts and red ties emerged after a closely controlled vote by the 204-member Party Central Committee, installed at the end of its five-yearly Congress on Sunday (October 21). Hu stays as Party boss -- as well as President and head of the Central Military Commission -- for five more years, while Wen will continue to manage the government and its ministries. After consolidating his grip on power, he is not expected to alter his well-known policy of developing a "harmonious society" and presenting himself as a man of the people. The Standing Committee retained parliament chief Wu Bangguo and two leaders installed under the previous Party chief, Jiang Zemin -- Li Changchun, who has been propaganda boss, and Jia Qinglin, head of the advisory council attached to the parliament. The line-up also includes He Guoqiang, set to take control of party organisation and to fight corruption, and Zhou Yongkang, whose background in policing puts him in line to replace Luo Gan, the former domestic security head. Li Keqiang worked under Hu in the Communist Youth League before postings in Henan, a poor and unruly rural province in central China, and Liaoning, a rustbelt province striving to attract investment and emerge as a modern manufacturing hub. Before taking over as party boss of Shanghai earlier this year, Xi Jinping steered two of the country's fastest-growing provinces, Fujian and Zhejiang. His father was a senior official close to the late reformer Hu Yaobang, who was a patron -- but no relation -- of Hu Jintao in the 1980s. A number of Chinese nationals gathered around giant screens in downtown Beijing to watch the announcement of their new leaders. "This is not surprising at all. I saw that there are more new young faces. Just like the Chinese economy, China's development is getting more and more dynamic," said Gan Wei, from Jiangxi province. At the Congress, Hu has pledged to press ahead with political reform in the world's fourth-biggest economy in the face of growing social pressures. "The central government's policies are good indeed. The local governments are trying to implement the policies. I am very concerned with people's living condition, life quality, reform of medical insurance in the countryside," said Li Chen, from Inner Mongolia. Public discontent with corruption and a growing wealth gap have led to rising protests nationwide. Alarmed by social unrest, Hu pledged to steer the party towards reforms that would make officials more accountable.

ITN Source | October 22, 2007

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