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China's Hu: Cautious, efficient, and still a mystery
Beijing (AFP) Oct 7, 2007 Cautious and efficient are words often used to describe Hu Jintao, the 64-year-old leader of China's Communist Party, but beyond generic adjectives like these, surprisingly little is known about him. As the October 15 start of the 17th Party Congress approaches, observers wonder what makes one of the world's most powerful men get up in the morning. Five years into what is almost certain to be a 10-year reign, Hu still has not shown if he is a reformer, but he has made clear that he is an adroit politician, according to Joseph Fewsmith, a China scholar at Boston University. "Part of the success story is that he made it, that he clearly has dominated the political scene, despite being given what appeared to be a quite weak hand at the beginning," he said. When he took control of the party in late 2002, Hu faced a leadership group stacked against him, with many key members loyal to his predecessor Jiang Zemin. They now seem outmanoeuvered, and President Hu appears very much in charge. Now the question is how or if he will use this power, and his political career gives no clear clues. Those who consider him a compassionate conservative, Chinese-style, may point out that he spent a long time in some of the nation's poorest regions, beginning in the northwestern province of Gansu. Others who tend to see in him a 21st-century authoritarian ruler are more likely to mention his time as party leader in Tibet, were he oversaw a declaration of martial law as pro-independence protests were brutally crushed. A return to the personality cult that surrounded Mao Zedong is out of the question. For one thing, any potential Hu worshippers would have trouble going to his birthplace to pay their respects, since it is open to dispute where exactly Hu was born in December 1942. The official Chinese biography lists him as a native of east China's Anhui province, now assumed to mean this is his ancestral home. Other sources say he was born in Shanghai, and still others say the nearby city of Taizhou. Trained as an engineer at the elite Tsinghua University, he took on a series of low-profile jobs, gradually steering towards the Communist Youth League, which he eventually headed, allowing him to build up a corps of proteges. It also helped Hu, the father of two, that he had a reputation of never turning down an assignment, but his big break came when late patriarch Deng Xiaoping noticed him and put him on a path for national leadership. Only on rare occasions does the man with the bank manager's face and the hesitant smile show that he is more complex than he lets on in formal, carefully choreographed appearances. When he visited Kenya last year, he amused his audience by breaking protocol and helping a tribal musician beat his skin drum. But instances such as these are exceptions, and only time will tell if more will become known of the man and whether he will shape the nation in a much more bold manner in the coming five years. Related Links Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com
Analysis: Berlin and Paris move apart
Berlin (UPI) Sep 20, 2007 France and Germany -- for years this meant one of the strongest alliances in Europe. Yet the skies between Berlin and Paris have become clouded ever since President Nicholas Sarkozy took over. |
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