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Kaiser kuo
郭怡广
I'm getting asked a lot to weigh in on what happened at the National Party Congress just as the press conference was beginning. What we can see is a masked staffer leading former General Secretary Hu Jintao (in office from 2003 to 2012) out of his seat and then out of the hall. He appears confused and hesitant. After a few seconds, he stands, appearing weak, and is led slowly to his right, first past General Secretary Xi Jinping, who remains seated. He speaks a few words to Xi, who says something and nods. Then, as he passes Li Keqiang, he pats him on the back and says a few words to him before continuing to exit.
We don't know what really happened. Was he just being a doddering old dude who missed his exit cue earlier? It's quite possible. This may have been just a cock-up, or it might have been done deliberately to demonstrate that Hu and any of those close to him will not have any chance to mar the facade of unanimity.
The new lineup, it seems, will be All the King's Men.
After all, around the same time that this incident was happening, we were seeing the names of the 204 members of the new Central Committee, which represents significant turnover and not a few surprises — among which, most notably, was that Premier Li Keqiang and others believed to be more "reform-minded" like Han Zheng and Wang Yang, and associated with Hu Jintao, were not on the list. This means they're not going to be on the 25-member Politburo, nor obviously on the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee.
Whether Hu Jintao's unusual exit was staged or accidental, we can certainly conclude that any countervailing power in the highest echelons of the Party represented by these moderates is no longer going to be there after the 20th Party Congress concludes, and for the next five and quite likely 10 years, barring any serious and unforeseen jolts to the political system.
Some other surprises thus far are that Qin Gang, who replaced Cui Tiankai as PRC Ambassador to the U.S. only a couple of years ago, has now been named to the Central Committee, and may be in line to head the Foreign Ministry. It's possible he may get a Politburo seat. Wang Yi, who had been State Councilor and Foreign Minister, might be in line now to head the Central Foreign Affairs Commission. Evidently, the U.S. relationship, which is of great consequence in this new age of gloves-off containment by the Biden administration, is going to be a major priority for Xi in this coming term.
Chen Quanguo, the highly controversial Party chief first of Tibet and then of Xinjiang, who oversaw the creation of the "grid policing" system in Tibet after the spate of self-immolations, and then oversaw the creation of the so-called "re-education camps" to which hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were extralegally and involuntarily sent since 2017, has also been removed from the Central Committee.
Stay tuned. |
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