China’s 20th Party Congress concluded on Saturday with a rare and shocking piece of live drama. Hu Jintao, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 2002 to 2012, was publicly escorted away from the Party Congress by staff, visibly confused and upset, just before the final votes of the session. Hu was seated in a prominent position next to current CCP leader Xi Jinping, and the incident was caught on camera; he appeared to ask Xi and Premier Li Keqiang a question, to which they both nodded, while Xi prevented him from taking some papers by placing his hand on them. Li Zhanshu, another prominent party leader, got up to aid Hu as he left but was tugged back down with a pull on his jacket by political theorist Wang Huning, seated next to him.
Hu was never as powerful as Xi is now; his time in power was still in the era of so-called collective leadership, and he had to contend with the formidable influence of his predecessor Jiang Zemin. During Hu’s tenure, corruption rose—and more dangerously for the party, public coverage of corruption rose, as did freedom of speech online and, to a limited extent, civil society groups and NGOs. That wasn’t out of any great commitment to liberalism on Hu’s part but because most party members were more occupied with making money than with enforcing the party line.
[For more analysis on China’s 20th Party Congress, visit FP’s special coverage site.]
