More on Hu Jintao
You've all seen the video of Hu Jintao being forcibly removed from the 20th CCP Congress just before voting on the new appointments to the Politburo Standing Committee. If you've not seen it, here it is, available everywhere in the world but in China - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFaG3EpFM8A
You'll see the papers have already been taken away from in front of Hu. You'll see Hu is forcibly removed from his seat and he tries to see the papers in front of Xi Jinping, but Xi pulls them away.
It appears that Hu had a deal with Xi Jinping to promote his son Hu Jaifeng to the Central Committee. Hu Jiafeng is now the party leader in Lishui in Zhejiang Province. The deal was to let Xi have his way with the appointments to the PSC if Hu Jaifeng was also promoted. This did not happen.
Apparently Xi did not want Hu Jintao to see the promotion list, which was in Xi’s documents at his seat but possibly Hu had a different list. In any case, Hu was led out of the Congress.
Now all references to Hu Jintao in Qiushi (Seeking Truth) an official CCP magazine have been removed – speeches, events from when Hu was General Secretary. Go ahead and try it in the English version - http://en.qstheory.cn/search.html?searchText=hu+jintao Hu Jintao and his son have both been disappeared online. This is like the Washington Post scrubbing all references to Obama once Trump comes into power.
I was asked how media in China will handle the ten years of Hu Jintao if he has been disappeared. There is an easy solution when history is pliable. Xi took power in 2012, Hu in 2002. Just change one number, from 1 to 0, and you have the sort of continuity that CCP wants. Xi has been the people’s leader since 2002, taking over from Jiang Zemin. Mao was the only other leader to be known as people’s leader.
Now begins a more repressive CCP internally and a more aggressive CCP internationally.
If the old promotion rules were being followed, only one of the new Standing Committee members, Ding Xuexiang (age 60) would be eligible to take over from Xi in five years. Ding has no deep party connections beyond loyalty to Xi. Loyalty to Xi is more important than experience or competence. There is no path for succession at this point.
Wang Huning, the chief CCP theorist and very close to Xi, has been assigned to head the CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress) a sort of alternate legislature. I'm not sure if this is a promotion for Wang or not. He has been on the PSC since 2017. I told you about him a few months ago. He wrote America Against America following a short stay in the US in 1988. Available at https://archive.org/details/america-against-america
