Hu Jintao tabbed to lead China's next generation'

By Edward Neilan

While Zhu Rongji minds the store, President Jiang Zemin lines up heirs to his ruling style.

TOKYO (JP): Draw a circle around the name of "Hu Jintao."

Academic and think tank sources in Shanghai told me on my recent month-long visit there that Hu is Jiang Zemin's designated heir to be the "core leadership" of China's "Fourth Generation."

Other China watchers are coming around to that assessment. For one, Prof. David Shambaugh, director of the Gaston Sigur Center for Asian Studies at George Washington University, writes in the January issue of the excellent Taiwan journal Issues and Studies, that it is Hu Jintao "who Jiang seems to be grooming as his eventual successor."

Jiang is the core of the "third-generation leadership" and as such saw things go pretty much his way at last Sept. 15 Communist Party Congress.

The path was cleared for outgoing Premier Li Peng (No. 2 ranked in the CCP after Jiang) to move to head of the National People's Congress at the expense of moderate Qiao Shi,72, (previously No.3) and for another former Mayor of Shanghai, Zhu Rongji (the new No 3), to become Premier at the current NPC Congress gathering.

Qiao Shi's unexpected ouster came through a maneuver calling for no new top appointments for those over age 70, specifically, that no one on the Politburo should be over 70.

Jiang, 72, offered to step down himself. Elders present at the meeting agreed that 70 should be the mandatory retirement age -- but that in Jiang's case, an exception should be made.

Goodbye, Qiao Shi!

Li and Zhu are both 69 but are likely to hold onto their seats for the five years covered by the 15th Congress. If Zhu performs well in leading the economy to the next century, he can be expected to stick around.

Jiang will either remain on the Politburo or assume a "Great Helmsman" role as did first generation leader Mao Zedong and second generation leader Deng Xiaoping. But despite hard work and adroitness in the back room, Jiang is not yet in the "Great Helmsman" class.

It is a tough road. Deng, the consummate comeback artist, saw two of his designated heirs, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, both liberally inclined, shot down before Jiang emerged after the Tiananmen Square episode.

Zhu, who was mayor of Shanghai during Tiananmen, ordered troops not to fire at Shanghai crowds and thus emerged as "clean"in that incident. This is important in case there is ever a settling of Tiananmen accounts that takes Li and possibly Jiang out of the picture.

Jiang would like to see his right hand man Zeng Quinghong, 59, become the "fourth generation" leader after the 16th Party Congress in 2002 but Zeng seems to have made some enemies. Zeng was instrumental in Jiang's smooth handling of the Hong Kong handover last year, Jiang's trip to the United States and the 15th Party Congress--all within months of the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

But during the just completed 15th Congress in September, Zeng did not secure enough votes to gain full Politburo membership and had to settle for alternate status.

Succession scenarios now center on Hu, barely 46. He holds a number of Party posts, including full membership in the Politburo and on its elite seven-member standing committee. Like most of the "Jiang group," Hu has a technology background, having studied hydraulic engineering at Qinghua University.

While the new Zhu Rongji cabinet, under Jiang, will be working intensively on economic reform, it may be that Hu will come along to institute the first steps toward democratic reform, which he is known to be studying.

Jiang's present team still must tackle difficult problems. The world is watching how China manages to address the Taiwan question diplomatically and at the same time modernize the military so as to make it a credible threat.