A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (38 page)

During his short visit, Hu reviewed the successful experience of Mao’s Communist revolution in the 1940s, searching for inspirations and ideas that would help shape his answers to China’s contemporary problems. He took the unusual step of doing so in front of members of the government-controlled media, so the entire country could mark his “pilgrimage.” Xinhua reported Hu spent time at a makeshift auditorium and listened attentively to the guide’s briefing on the seventh Party Congress, which had been held there. At that congress, Mao had addressed the challenges of being a ruling political party by warning the whole party, especially the senior leadership, against complacency and corruption. He said:

       
Winning the war is only the first step of a 10,000-mile-long march. I urge all of our comrades to continue keeping their modesty,
prudence, humility, and honesty. I also urge you to keep up with the spirit of hard work and plain living.

Based on Mao’s recommendations, the party leadership drafted the following guidelines: Do not host lavish birthday parties; do not accept gifts; do not toast each other with liquor frequently; do not applaud each other frequently; and do not name a place or a street after a leader.

A tour guide told a reporter with a foreign media organization that visitors would always giggle sarcastically at such references because wining and dining at public expense, and accepting gifts, have become the least corrupt activities among officials today, in comparison to the millions of yuan embezzled each year at all levels of the party.

Journalists following Hu during the trip noticed that he had spent 30 yuan, or $5, on food out of his own pocket. He also insisted on staying overnight in Xibaipo even though his aides advised against it because the conditions of the local government guest house might be rudimentary. Hu wanted to experience how ordinary people in this old revolutionary base lived their lives. The next day, Hu and his entourage visited the homes of several villagers and advised local officials “a Party that does not cherish the spirit of hard working and plain living cannot survive and thrive.”

After Hu Jintao left the village, a reporter asked a villager, surnamed Han, who had chatted with the new party chief for fourteen minutes, “What do you think of party General Secretary Hu Jintao?”

“He is a very nice person,” Han said, with a beaming smile. “He specifically told us not to make any preparations before [his visit].”

The villager’s comment—“he is a nice person”—reflected what the public in general thought of Hu in 2002, when ordinary people were full of hope and cautious optimism. Unlike his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who was perceived to be too flamboyant, showy, and elitist, Hu fit the traditional image of a young emperor—poised, humble, prudent, with a cultured and composed demeanor. He was seen as a true commoner who understood ordinary people’s needs. During his rule, Hu repeatedly appealed to public sentiment for Mao Zedong, pushing the resurgence of Mao-worshipping to a new height. He admonished party members by reminding them that the party was first and fore
most the people’s party and from those roots the party derived its legitimacy to rule. He also tried to imitate Mao by establishing tighter political control, as Vladimir Putin did in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Many of his pro-people policies and his brutal crackdown on dissent clearly reflected Mao’s influence. Bo Xilai’s “Singing Red and Smashing Black” campaign in Chongqing was a logical expression of Hu’s leftist philosophy.

Unlike the princelings, Hu was born into a small tea merchant’s family in China’s southeastern province of Jiangsu in 1942. His mother died when he was very young. His father’s family business was wrecked by wars and natural disasters. After the Communists came, Hu’s father joined a state retail cooperative as an accountant and supported his three children on a meager income.

In 1959, through his own intelligence and diligence, Hu Jintao entered Qinghua University, similar to MIT in the US, to study hydraulic power stations on rivers and was assigned a job in 1968 as an engineer at a hydroelectric station in the impoverished province of Gansu in northwestern China. In Gansu, he overcame adverse political conditions in the Mao era and gradually moved up the hierarchical ladder of the party, from engineer to administrator and junior party official.

Chinese journalists liked to recount an incident in his early career to illustrate Hu’s humble origins and his solidarity with those who had suffered injustices in the hands of corrupt officials. In 1978, Hu’s father passed away in his hometown, but there was some unsettled business Hu wanted to conclude. During the Cultural Revolution, his father had offended some city officials, who in retaliation charged him with “embezzling public money” and locked him up for a short period of time. The imprisonment ruined his health and became a stigma for his family for years. In the aftermath of Mao’s death, the local government agency had promised to revisit his father’s case and reverse the verdict against him. While preparing for his father’s funeral, Hu contacted local officials, requesting that they clear his father’s name before the burial so he could rest in peace.

Acting on the advice of his friends, Hu hosted a lunch at an expensive restaurant in his hometown and invited the county chief to “have
a heart-to-heart talk” over food. For the meal, Hu paid 50 yuan, almost equivalent to Hu’s monthly salary. Two tables were set, but no one showed up. Two hours later, a junior official from the county chief’s office arrived with the news that the county chief and other leaders were too busy to attend. Feeling insulted, Hu shared the food with the chefs and waitstaff at the restaurant. Hu was said to be so disgusted and hurt he never visited his hometown again.

The local pols in Hu’s hometown had totally misjudged Hu’s political potential. In 1980, when the Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping revised its charter and abolished life tenure for senior party officials, Hu’s career took off dramatically. In March of that year, the party unveiled a series of succession plans calling for the central and local governments to promote university-educated individuals with science and technology backgrounds to key leadership positions. In Gansu, Song Ping, the provincial party chief, was Hu’s fellow alumnus. He noticed Hu, a junior manager at the Provincial Construction Committee, during a presentation at an urban planning conference, where Hu’s amazing memory and his familiarity with statistics left an indelible impression on Song. He later appointed Hu deputy director of his organization. In 1981, when Song was called back to Beijing to head the State Planning Commission, he arranged for Hu to attend a training session for cadres at the Central Party School in Beijing. While Hu was undertaking his one-year training program, Deng Xiaoping issued a challenge to the party’s personnel department: he wanted to see at least fifty new leaders under the age of fifty on the Party Central Committee at the upcoming Party Congress.

Deng’s request was duly met and a large group of relatively young university graduates entered the Party Central Committee in 1982. Hu Jintao was chosen as an alternate member and was made deputy secretary of the China Youth League Secretariat, a potentially powerful position. He and his family moved from Gansu to Beijing.

The China Youth League is a Communist Party–led organization for young people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight. The league, with an estimated 73 million members, is structured like the Communist Party and is responsible for guiding the activities and ideologies of young Chinese. Hu served first as the deputy and then
secretary general at the China Youth League for more than two years, during which time he became acquainted with the then party general secretary Hu Yaobang. The two of them made many visits around the country to mobilize young people for the party’s modernization drive. In the mid-1980s, the reformists and Maoist conservatives within the senior ranks of the party fought fiercely over China’s future. Both factions reached out to the China Youth League, trying to gain influence over the next generation of Communists. Although it was a challenge for Hu Jintao to decide which faction he should support, he cautiously chose the middle path, actively implementing activities initiated by reformists and promoting programs to preserve and solidify the Maoist ideology advocated by the conservatives. Hu thrived in the center.

In 1985, with the recommendation of reformist leaders such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, Hu Jintao was transferred to China’s southwestern province of Guizhou, a poverty-stricken region where the per capita GDP in 2011 was only $1,502, the lowest in China. As the provincial party chief, Hu told the media that Guizhou provided him with a rare opportunity to understand the real China and the lives of people at the bottom rung of society. In Guizhou, Hu displayed his signature political personality—he quietly focused on the local economy and education, and dutifully followed Beijing’s directives without openly siding with either political faction. His prudence again served him well. When his mentor, Hu Yaobang, was forced to resign in 1988 for what were deemed by the party to be “liberal pro-Western” programs, Hu Jintao was spared the purge that consumed many of his contemporaries, though his prize was to be appointed party chief of Tibet, a volatile and internationally sensitive region that needed a stable leader.

A few months after his arrival, Tibet’s pro-Beijing spiritual leader, the Panchen Lama, died of a heart attack. His sudden death fueled all kinds of rumors, one of which claimed that the party had assassinated him because of his criticism of the party’s Tibetan policies. It was a time of political and social uncertainty. As the new party chief, Hu appealed to social and religious leaders to maintain peace. Despite his efforts, rioting became commonplace and, on March 7, 1989, the State
Council declared martial law in Lhasa. The next day, the
Tibetan Daily
published a large photo of Hu Jintao wearing a helmet and directing troops called in to restore order. This was Hu’s first media exposure in Tibet and the face he showed the Tibetan public was clad in a menacing helmet. It was a carefully calculated political posture. Judging from the severity of the situation, Hu knew that if he was too soft, pro-independence forces being championed in some overseas media might gain advantage. He needed to project the image that China would not back down an inch from its claim to sovereignty over Tibet, which was incorporated into China in 1951 and classified as the Xizang Autonomous Region in 1965. The news photograph of Hu in a helmet reached Beijing and changed the perception of senior party veterans. There is an unconfirmed story that after his aide showed him a picture of Hu in the
Tibetan Daily
, Deng Xiaoping commented, “I’m pleased that Hu is tough and stands firm on principles.”

Martial law in Lhasa shocked the world. The European Parliament, the US Congress, and many human rights organizations voiced their strong condemnation of China’s brutal suppression. There would be geopolitical ramifications for China, but Hu held firm and ended the rioting. To Hu’s supporters in Beijing, it was a spectacular beginning.

The 14th Party Congress in 1992 marked the last chance for Deng Xiaoping and his contemporaries to serve on the Party Central Committee. Before giving up their power, the veterans became obsessed with the party’s succession plan for 2000, when a new leadership would be appointed. The country was still reeling from the aftermath of what the official media called the “Tiananmen Incident” of 1989. The new leaders would decide the direction for China for the next century, and the octogenarians wanted a smooth system of succession that would ensure the party retained its ruling status and that the country would not abandon Communism. Of immediate concern for Deng Xiaoping, who was retiring, was to select a reliable leader who could complement Deng’s successor, Jiang Zemin, one capable of checking and balancing Jiang’s power while continuing the reforms Deng had initiated and championed.

During the search, Hu Jintao appeared on Deng’s radar. Hu’s handling of the riots in Tibet was still fresh in the memories of Deng and
many veterans and they were convinced that the young man would be a tough leader. Deng reportedly liked the fact that Hu was prudent and practical. Hu’s humble family background made it easier for the public to accept him, and Hu had skillfully cultivated relationships with both factions within the party, so his promotion would not disrupt the status quo and polarize the party.

The choice of Hu surprised the public and political analysts; the party chief of Tibet, largely an unknown entity, was designated as Jiang Zemin’s successor at the 15th Party Congress, the “crown prince” of China. But, Hu was soon depicted as boring and humorless by the public because he could not speak his mind freely or act according to his own will. He was constantly caught between two masters. On the one hand, he needed to curry favor with Deng Xiaoping and the other veterans who had installed him. Though the veterans had supposedly retired, they remained active and influential in political circles. Hu knew that they could lift him high or destroy him. On the other hand, he had to tread carefully around Jiang Zemin, his current boss, who similarly held his fate in his hands. Hu felt the need to please all sides.

Quietly, Hu used his position as head of the party’s personnel department to promote his own people, especially former colleagues at the China Youth League at both national and local levels. As a result, a significant number of youth leaguers joined the Party Central Committee. The trend continued after Hu’s official takeover. Even though Hu never openly admitted it, he was known within the party as the “spiritual leader” of the youth league faction, which, along with the princelings, now dominates China’s political arena.

In prevailing terms, “youth leaguers” refers to those who start their political careers at youth league organizations and were born and grew up under Communism. The China Youth League charter defines it as a provisional army of the Communist Party. The youth league has long been considered a training school or a launching pad for young people who aspire to rise within the ranks of the Communist Party. Unlike the princelings, who owe their rich political and social resources to their parents or relatives, the majority of youth leaguers, such as Hu Jintao, grew up in ordinary families and rose to power on the strength of their talent, connections, or pure luck.