Hu's magical recipe for rising to the top

As expected, on November 15 the 16th Conference of the Chinese Communist Party named Hu Jintao, a 59-year old technocrat, as the new leader of the party and state at the top of a relatively young leadership. With this, China enters a new era under the fourth generation of the Chinese Communist leaders. The significance of the event is that this is the first change of Chinese leadership that is not accompanied by purges, bloodshed or upheavals.

One of Hu's former schoolmates is reported to have said that he never expected Hu to lead China one day. According to him, Hu was among a group of students that were only concerned with singing, acting, performing classical dances and reciting revolutionary anthems, leading them to organising ballroom dancing parties where Hu showed off a competent foxtrot.

However, it seems that Hu, at a later stage of life, learned more than performing dances. He seems to have known the magic recipe for rising to the top of the hierarchy of power in his country.

The recipe included obedience, showing disinterest in senior positions, keeping any dangerous opinion to himself, refraining from engaging in controversial issues, and avoiding making statements that were against the official guidelines.

This is why Hu has sidestepped potentially embarrassing situations and avoided spotlights, ceremonies, speeches and overseas trips, remaining tight-lipped and keeping a low-profile, to the extent that most Chinese have never heard of him until 1998 when he was appointed as Vice-President.

Lesson

Perhaps Hu learned the lesson from what had happened to the Chinese technocrats who tried to attract attention and rise to power by making statements that were inconsistent with the Communist Party's policies. Among these technocrats was Hu's own mentor, Hu Yaobang, who was dismissed in the 1980s and was subject to a total media blackout until his death because of pushing political reform faster than an aging generation of revolutionary leaders could bear.

This ambiguity surrounding Hu has deprived observers from having a precise idea about his personality and politics, leading them to looking closely at the posts he has held, the company he has kept, the policies implemented by the institutions under his control, and the remarks he has made so far. They came to a conclusion that he has been both soft and hard with relatively liberal leanings.

However, there are observers who believe that he is more open-minded than many of his predecessors and that his line of caution and abstention from expressing his mind are dictated by the rules of the game.

In other words, he does not want to anger the aging hardliners within the ruling party, and at the same time he does not want to motivate the younger generation until he gains a more solid ground and attains full control of power.

The second viewpoint may seem closer to the truth particularly with President Jiang Zemin's endeavour to play a paternal role behind-the-scenes (similar to that of his predecessor, Deng Xiaoping) after relinquishing power in order to protect himself, his family, and his old comrades from corruption scandals or from losing influence.

Youngest leader

Hu Jintao, who has set records for being the youngest leader in nearly every post he has held, was born in Shanghai in 1942 to a family fallen from grace. His forebears were tea merchants and had a booming trade across many Chinese coastal provinces during the Qing dynasty.

However, by the time Hu was learning to walk and speak, the family's huge trade was reduced to a small shop in Shanghai. When the family moved to Jiangsu, Hu joined one of its best high schools and was able to complete its course with distinction in 1959, enabling him to get admission to the prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing from where he graduated in 1965 with a degree in hydraulic engineering.

In the same year, he joined the Communist Party and became a member of the Communist Youth League (a training ground for party cadres) and the secretary of its dance troupe. During the same period, he was also a teacher responsible for educating students on Marxist theory at Qinghua University.

In 1968, during the Cultural Revolution he was sent to the remote and impoverished province of Gansu to build houses for farmers who had been displaced from their native villages by the building of a new dam.

There, he did so well that his seniors were impressed by his management talents for the first time. He even established close ties with Song Ping, a former revolutionary who was promoted during that time to the provincial party chief. Such close ties were behind his elevation in 1982 to his first national post, vice secretary of the Communist Youth League. Two years later he was promoted once again and became the leader of the Youth League, finding himself in a clutch of the most reform-minded officials.

Modest role

Some observers hold that Hu played a modest role in Deng Xiaoping's reform movement which put an end to China's isolation and extremist ideological trends. However, one cannot deny the importance of the role played by the institution under his control at the time, namely the Communist Youth League. The latter's newspaper, China Youth Daily, significantly helped the reformist camp in promoting its ideas and curbing a campaign launched by party conservatives.

Additionally, one cannot deny Hu's important role in ridding the Chinese young men and women from the strong grip of party extremists through organising mixed ballroom dancing parties across the country.

The year 1985 was a year of great significance for Hu, because it was the year when he was sent to Guizhou as a provincial party chief. Through this post he could exhibit his leadership style and prove his closeness to the daily hardships of his fellow citizens unlike many officials of the time.

However, while his presence and work in Guizhou earned him a bright image, they gave a boost to the provinces' youth to demonstrate, demanding more reforms. This was reflected in overwhelming demonstrations at the end of 1986 by Guizhou's students who occupied the lecture halls of their universities.

It was possible for things to get out of control and turn into a bloodbath had it not been for the prudence of Hu who visited the demonstrators and convinced them to stay calm. This gave him more credit in Beijing in the same manner that Jiang Zemin got more credit some time later in 1989 when he succeeded in reaching a peaceful end for the students' demonstrations in Shanghai where he was party chief.

Hu is criticised for the fact that upon the fall of his liberal mentor, Hu Yaobang, he did not stand by him but condemned him and his supporters, saying that they had been contaminated by the values of western democracy.

However, there are others who approve of his conduct and consider it as an inevitable step for survival and continuity allowing the build up of a solid base of the reformist current. Were it not for this step, he would not have been appointed in 1988 to a sensitive position, party chief of the turbulent province of Tibet.

At that time, the demand for independence was a