Emerging leadership in China's government
BEIJING -- Chinese President Hu Jintao engineered the retirement of a powerful Communist Party rival Sunday in a move that enhanced his political standing yet may have opened up a divisive battle to succeed him.
How much freedom the president will have to act in coming years will be clearer today when eight days of high-level party conclaves end with delegates reappointing Hu to a second five-year term and inaugurating a new collective leadership he will head.
The outcome of the dealmaking will determine how united the party is in dealing with tensions over a widening gap between rich and poor at home and managing China's rising clout abroad so as not to anger the U.S. and other world powers.
Hu gained a significant edge Sunday with the departure of Vice President Zeng Qinghong. The president plans to elevate at least one protege and potential successor to the Politburo Standing Committee, the powerful body that runs China, which currently has nine seats.
But the departure of Zeng also may force Hu to reserve leadership spots for rivals and constrain his decision-making abilities.
If Hu is successful, the moves will see him emerging stronger from the national party congress, freer to pursue more balanced growth and boost spending on health, education and other services long-neglected in the headlong drive for economic growth.
Today's announcement of a new leadership lineup marks the end of months of often divisive in-house bargaining over high-level posts that saw Hu purge Shanghai's party chief.
At the congress, the more than 2,200 delegates -- national and provincial political and military elite -- endorsed amending the party's charter to include Hu's pet policy program, the "scientific outlook on development." The program attempts to channel growth to better benefit rural areas, low-wage workers and migrants left out of the economic boom of recent years.
"We must lead the people in grasping and making the most of the important period of strategic opportunities," Hu told the delegates inside Beijing's Great Hall of the People. With that they stood and sung the communist anthem.
Delegates also appointed members to the party's internal anti-corruption agency and approved a new Central Committee, the body that will appoint the ruling Politburo and from which Zeng and others stepped down.
Along with Zeng, two other members of the senior leadership's Politburo Standing Committee, two vice premiers and the defense minister stepped down. State media gave no reason for the moves, but all were near or older than the party's preferred retirement age of around 70.
Zeng may keep his vice president's title until March, when government posts are reapportioned. But his departure from the Politburo leaves a power vacuum in the leadership that Hu and the Zeng camp are vying to fill, analysts said.
Much of the efforts are focused on filling Politburo Standing Committee seats with leaders in their 50s who will succeed Hu, Premier Wen Jiabao and others now in their mid-60s when they face retirement at the next party conclave in 2012.
Hu's perceived favorite is Li Keqiang, the leader of the northeastern industrial province of Liaoning who served under Hu in the Communist Youth League during the 1980s.
As part of the price for Zeng's departure, however, another potential successor is likely to claim a leadership slot -- Shanghai Party Secretary Xi Jinping. He is the son of a revolutionary veteran, like Zeng, and is less beholden to Hu.
Managing friction between the two favorites while not relegating himself to lame-duck status will be a huge challenge for Hu's second term, said Cheng Li, a watcher of elite Chinese politics at Washington's Brookings Institution.
"If there's a problem with the succession, he'll be blamed."
Senior posts also likely to go to Zeng associates include the law enforcement portfolio and running the party's investigative agency, the Central Discipline Inspection Committee.
The son of a veteran revolutionary who ran party purges for Mao Zedong, Zeng rose to power as an aide to Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin. In a sign of Jiang's and Zeng's lingering influence, one of their allies, Jia Qinglin, kept his Central Committee seat and thus likely Politburo slot, despite being tainted by a smuggling and corruption scandal.