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AFP. 27 April 2002. Mystery man or just ordinary guy? Hu Jintao keeps the world guessing. BEIJING -- Less is known about Hu Jintao, the likely next leader of China, than any prospective head of a major power since Kremlinologists pored over top-level reshuffles in the Soviet empire. As the current vice president visits the United States this week in a diplomatic coming-of-age, the hopes are he will start showing the man behind the youthful looks and the modest smile. During the Malaysian leg of his trip, Hu took a first step in the direction of more candor by depicting himself as just an ordinary guy and dismissing portrayals of him as "mysterious." "That description is not fair to me," he told reporters while sightseeing on the Malaysian resort island of Penang. Maybe not, but precious little is known about the 59-year-old who is expected to be put at the helm of the Chinese communist party this fall and become his nation's president about a year from now. Even the place where Hu was born in December 1942 remains open to dispute. The official Chinese biography lists him as a native of eastern Anhui province, a claim now largely taken to mean this is his ancestral home. Other sources say his place of birth is Shanghai, and others again point to the city of Taizhou, 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Shanghai. Sir Winston Churchill's famous description of the Soviet Union as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" could be usefully applied to Hu. If the riddle is the opaque political system that plucked Hu from the communist ranks, the mystery is his personality. The enigma -- and the biggest question of all -- is what he intends to do with China once in power. The first part of the story, on how Hu was elevated to the highest rungs of power from among thousands of potential candidates, had very little to do with his personal qualities, according to observers. What happened, observers say, was that one day in 1992, three communist party bigwigs, including Jiang Zemin, went to see then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping with a list of promising middle-aged cadres. New members of the standing committee of the party's politburo -- the handful of people who decide virtually everything in China -- had to be picked, and when Hu's name came up, Deng's reaction was simple, but decisive. "He is a good comrade," the aging patriarch reportedly said. That settled it. Many rumors have circulated as to why Deng was so sure he had found the right man to lead the world's most populous nation for at least a decade. One explanation is that Hu was friendly with Deng's children, powerful representatives of the "princeling" faction of spoiled offspring produced by China's revolutionary generation. The second big question -- "Who's Hu?" -- usually elicits answers that offer little solid fact. "He is very good, outstanding," said Wang Dazhong, president of Qinghua University in Beijing, where Hu graduated with a degree in hydraulic engineering in 1965. "He is very methodical and has a remarkable memory," said a diplomat who has met him. "He has a firm grasp of international culture and great facilities on the economic level." Although Hu's formative years were in the turbulent 1960s, when the Cultural Revolution swept across China, this has not made him a dogmatic politician, experts say. "He is cautious, but open-minded," said Cheng Li, a professor at New York's Hamilton College, who recently published a book on China's leaders. "He is very realistic, which means both liberals and conservatives and even the military like him," he said. Which leads to the third question, about what kind of place will China become as Hu serves out his likely two five-year terms at party general secretary and president. Foreign observers have tried to glean nuggets about Hu's political views, but with little success, a phenomenon observers say is intentional. "He is very cautious with the Western media," said Li. "If the Western media portray him as a hardliner, that's not good for him, but if they depict him as China's Gorbachev, it would be downright disastrous." One of the few clues is provided by the Central Party School, a secretive institution in the northern outskirts of Beijing designed to groom senior cadres, which Hu has headed for almost a decade. Ancient Chinese art, not busts of Marx and Lenin, greets the visitors to the campus' brand new auditorium, where students get lectures in capitalism and the intricacies of World Trade Organization rules. "You can pick market economics as an optional course," a student recently told AFP. According to observers, the school is a miniature version of what all of China may look like under Hu -- culturally conservative, but willing to use modern ideas to improve the economy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
