Reuters: “China’s next leader, Xi Jinping, looks to have emerged politically stronger after ruling Communist Party elders foiled a second attempt by outgoing President Hu Jintao to stack the top echelon of the new administration with his own allies.
Hu had been maneuvering to promote his star protege, Hu Chunhua, to the party’s supreme decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, as part of the current leadership transition, but other senior party figures have opposed the idea, two independent sources said.
Hu Chunhua, who is not related to Hu Jintao, is instead likely to be given one of China’s biggest but also most testing political assignments as new party chief of southwestern Chongqing, the job from which disgraced politician Bo Xilai was ousted, said the sources with ties to the top party leadership.
The sideways move for Hu Chunhua, currently party boss for Inner Mongolia, follows the demotion of another of Hu Jintao’s closest allies at the weekend – both taken as signs that Xi may have a relatively freer hand to forge consensus among peers.
“Hu’s (Jintao) loss is Xi’s gain,” one of the sources with ties to the leadership told Reuters, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. “Xi is in a less difficult situation.”
China, currently mired in an economic downturn, faces growing calls for it to step up the pace of economic and social reforms, a task that could prove trickier for Xi if the Standing Committee were to include politicians reluctant to make changes to the cautious direction set by Hu over the past decade.
But the situation remains fluid, with the make-up of the new Standing Committee, currently comprising nine members, still to be finalized in a once-in-a-decade transition to be unveiled at the party’s 18th congress, expected next month at the earliest.”
via China’s next leader buoyed by fresh setback for Hu: sources | Reuters.
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