Characteristics of Hu Jintao’s Leadership

In his book, David Shambaugh outlined a few pertinent character-istics of Hu Jintao's leadership.

For a start, Hu had not cultivated a web of patron-client ties and "did not seem eager to supplant Jiang’s (Zemin) network. Even if he had, he was substantially outnumbered."

With a more consensual and coalition-building style, Hu was described as "smart not to try and challenge straight-on a dominant leadership faction, but rather to bid his time and work progressively to increase his own influence and insert his own people into positions of power."

"After the twin congresses in 2002-3, those promoted to positions in central party apparatus who did have ties to Hu came from diverse backgrounds but had careers that had intersected with Hu's – rather than having been affiliated with Hu in faction-like relationships over time." (China's Communist Party Atrophy and Adaptation, Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 2008)

Those in this group include Premier Wen Jiabao as he and Hu worked together in Gansu. It also included Secretariat member and head of CCP Propaganda Department Liu Yunshan who had ties to Hu dating to their tenures as provincial party secretaries. From 1987 to 1991, Liu was the secretary of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Party Committee, while Hu served in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Both Liu and Hu also had ties to former CCP general secretary and Youth League chief Hu Yaobang.

At the provincial level however, there were many officials who shared ties with Hu through CYL or the Communist Youth League. These included Li Keqiang (former Liaoning party secretary), Zhang Baoshun (former Shanxi party secretary) and Li Yuanchao (former Jiangsu party secretary), all of whom served under Hu when he was CYL secretary from 1982 to 1984. CCP United Front Work Department head Liu Yandong, minister of civil affairs Li Xueju and minister of supervision Li Zhilun also overlapped in the CYL during Hu's tenure.

After the 16th Party Congress and 10th National People’s Congress, Jiang finally relinquished leadership, even though his network of Shanghai and other allies remained largely in place. Even so, Hu had not done much to promote individuals associated with his past.

"Rather, his favored strategy has been to push his populist policy agenda forward and thereby attempt to co-opt Jiang's clients and other officials to it – thus forging a broad coalition that is much more issue based than personality or faction based."

"What Hu has astutely done is to set items on the national agenda and then launch a political campaign in support of each component. In each case, he has turned to different key officials to implement the campaigns, thereby "testing" their loyalty and in effect co-opting them into compliance."

He first did this with Jiang stalwart and Politburo Standing Committee member Zeng Qinghong who was put in charge of drafting and implementing the program to improve the "party’s ruling capacity" (zhizheng nengli) after the Fourth Plenum in September 2004.

He also did it with Organization Department director He Guoqiang during the "party's advanced nature" campaign in 2005 and 2006.

He again did it with Wen and others in the State Council when he "succeeded in smuggling his Socialist Harmonious Society theory and the Scientific Development Concept" into the 11th Five-Year program in 2005.

"These were all very astute moves by a politician playing a weaker hand."

China leadership specialist Cheng Li who was cited in the book argued that Hu had been able to forge an unprecedented "bipartisanship" between the two dominant policy coalitions – the Jiang Zemin/Zeng Qinghong coalition and the Hu Jintao/Wen Jiabao coalition.

"Rather than pushing alternative competing policy agendas (and thus aggravating factional cleavages), the genius of Hu's approach has been to generate and shift the policy agenda toward three components that have proven very popular inside and outside the party."

These components are: 1) More balanced regional economic development, 2) increased concern for social justice and social harmony, and 3) greater party and state transparency and institutionalization.

Even though the days of factional politics and strongman rule seemed to be a thing of the past, Shambaugh noted that the party's history of "winner takes all" and "tiger eat tiger elite factional politics cannot be quickly dismissed." These factional differences may simply be "submerged and suppressed and could quickly reappear under conditions of a serious crisis or emergency."

Even so, Shambaugh concluded that the multiple elements of party institutionalization and party building had already played a role in weakening factional ties.

"The CCP leaders today seem to have adopted the dictum that they must hang together or they will hang separately."