Fang Lian Profiles: Plagued by corruption and criticized as mediocre while in office, but seeing his reputation surge after retirement? Is it all thanks to Xi Jinping's foil, or is he the most underrated General Secretary? The most loyal successor of Reform and Opening Up! The promotion path, merits, and faults of the "Tiger of Lhasa" Hu Jintao!
Toronto Fang Lian released a video: Fang Lian Profiles: Plagued by rampant corruption and criticized as mediocre while in office, yet his reputation skyrocketed after retirement? Entirely thanks to Xi Jinping's foil, or is he the most underrated General Secretary? The most loyal heir to Reform and Opening Up! The promotion path, merits, and flaws of the Tiger of Lhasa, Hu Jintao!
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In 2010, Forbes magazine published its ranking of the world's most powerful people, with Hu Jintao ranked first. Yet just 12 years later, at the closing ceremony of the 20th National Congress, once the world's most powerful Hu Jintao was watched coldly by Xi Jinping and tremblingly escorted out under the gaze of everyone, a scene full of desolation and heartbreak.
Hu Jintao was heavily criticized for rampant corruption while in office, but after retirement, his reputation continuously rose thanks to Xi Jinping as a foil. What was the real Hu Jintao like? He was the "Pen-rack Immortal", the "Tiger of Lhasa", the "Poker-face General Secretary", and the "Disappeared Tiger".
In the seniority-based system of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), rising to the top requires either old seniority or strong backing. Yet Hu Jintao's family background and class status were very poor. Born in Taizhou, Jiangsu in 1942, he missed out on all the era's dividends while taking the brunt of its negative impacts. He lost his mother at age 7, and his father Hu Jingzhi's tea business was nationalized under joint state-private ownership, saddling the Hu family with a bourgeois label. Family environment and background profoundly influenced Hu Jintao, shaping a cautious and moderate personality.
Hu Jintao's family was in Jiangsu, where the political climate was relatively relaxed, allowing him to be admitted to the Department of Hydraulic Engineering at Tsinghua University in 1959, though adjusted due to his family background. He worked hard to appear moderate and cautious to avoid being purged; his academic performance was good but not the absolute top, and he was politically obedient without being extreme. He initially failed to join the Communist Youth League due to his background, but later won the appreciation of Tsinghua President Jiang Nanxiang. Recognizing Hu Jintao's ability and political loyalty, Jiang Nanxiang cultivated him as a political counselor, paving the way for his entry into politics.
In 1964, Hu Jintao joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and served as a Tsinghua political counselor. When the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, his mentor Jiang Nanxiang was overthrown, and Hu Jintao did not escape unscathed, frequently facing struggle sessions. His father Hu Jingzhi was targeted during the movement and eventually died of depression. Hu Jintao once again utilized moderation and caution, choosing to lie low. During the Hundred-Day Wudou period at Tsinghua University, he maintained his low profile.
In 1968, Hu Jintao was forced to leave Tsinghua and assigned as an ordinary worker at the Liujiaxia Hydropower Engineering Station in Gansu. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, he met the benefactor of his life—Chen Shunyao, then deputy secretary of the Tsinghua University Party Committee, whose husband was veteran CCP cadre Song Ping. Under Song Ping's appreciation, Hu Jintao was promoted from an ordinary worker to Secretary of the Communist Youth League Gansu Provincial Committee, and subsequently further recommended by Song Ping and introduced to Hu Yaobang. Hu Yaobang also appreciated Hu Jintao, believing that he was emotionally stable, possessed a Tsinghua degree, and had not participated in the Cultural Revolution, making him the talent urgently needed for Reform and Opening Up.
With the joint recommendation of Hu Yaobang and Song Ping, Hu Jintao was appointed as the First Secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Youth League Central Committee and Chairman of the All-China Youth Federation, returning to Beijing. During Hu Yaobang's tenure, he was promoted rapidly, becoming the top leader of the national youth system. However, during his administration, he had no signature personal policies, consistently adhering to a moderate and cautious approach, prioritizing stability.
In 1985, Hu Jintao was promoted to Secretary of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee, becoming the youngest provincial party secretary at the time. Facing the impoverished and underdeveloped Guizhou, he visited every county and city, attempting to implement the separation of party and government and a system of administrative responsibility to purge corrupt officials. When the student movement broke out in 1986, Hu Jintao resolved the protests by engaging in dialogue with student representatives, making concessions and promises, and refraining from subsequent retaliation, a move that earned him appreciation from the central leadership.
In 1987, Hu Yaobang lost power, and the Dalai Lama proposed the Five-Point Peace Plan for Tibet, making the Tibet issue a high-risk political matter. Deng Xiaoping, favoring Hu Jintao's traits of being "dull," obedient, and uninvolved in factional struggles, transferred him to Tibet. In early 1989, shortly after arriving in Tibet, Hu Jintao faced the sensitive situation of the Panchen Lama's passing. The only thing he could do was to constantly report and seek instructions, waiting for orders from the central government.
On February 7, 1989, the Snow Lion Flag appeared at the Jokhang Temple, sparking protests. Hu Jintao reported to the central government and, upon receiving orders from Zhao Ziyang, instructed the armed police to head to the Jokhang Temple; however, the improper handling triggered larger-scale conflicts. On March 2, Tibetans gathered again to protest, and Hu Jintao once again deployed armed police to clear the area. On March 4, Deng Xiaoping approved martial law, allowing for preventive arrests and the use of force. Hu Jintao executed Deng Xiaoping's decision, and the armed police opened fire on the Tibetans, causing heavy casualties. This crackdown even shocked the internal ranks of the Communist army, with over 3,000 Lhasa police officers refusing to cooperate with the armed police.
On March 7, the People's Liberation Army entered Lhasa, and Li Peng issued a martial law decree. After completing his mission, Hu Jintao returned to Beijing, earning the title "Tiger of Lhasa" and securing a ticket to the core of supreme power. Two months later, Deng Xiaoping replicated Hu Jintao's crackdown experience in Lhasa in Beijing, leading to the "June Fourth" incident.
In 1992, Deng Xiaoping specifically named Hu Jintao to enter the Politburo Standing Committee, designating him as his successor. Deng Xiaoping valued Hu Jintao's political loyalty, his refusal to overturn the verdict on "June Fourth," and his promise not to disrupt the Reform and Opening-up. Hu Jintao's "lack of core competitiveness" was precisely what Deng Xiaoping needed.
Hu Jintao's political career was characterized by stability and moderation. He never returned to Jixi, Anhui, to acknowledge his ancestors, remaining silent on clan narratives. Although Jiang Zemin wanted to find fault, he failed due to the support of elders like Song Ping and Wan Li.
In November 2002, Hu Jintao became the General Secretary of the CCP. However, his political power was significantly weakened; Jiang Zemin remained as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and the Standing Committee was expanded to nine members, with the Jiang faction holding the majority. Hu Jintao became one of the weakest CCP leaders, leading to a situation where "political decrees could not leave Zhongnanhai."
During his second term, Hu Jintao took over as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, becoming a full-fledged General Secretary, but the Youth League faction held only three seats on the Standing Committee. Li Keqiang, the crown prince he had personally fostered, lost the election in 2007 due to obstruction by the Jiang faction, and Xi Jinping was elected instead. During the Hu Jintao era, the CCP implemented a "nine-dragon water management" cyber-feudal system, where Standing Committee members acted independently, making it difficult to push through reforms.
Hu Jintao belonged to the "commoner faction," focusing on social redistribution and the construction of the rule of law. He abolished the 2,600-year-old agricultural tax, achieved free compulsory education, and established a widespread medical and pension insurance system.
Although it only amounted to a few dozen yuan per month, it was indeed the first state pension payment received by Chinese farmers in 2,000 years. In order to implement the Reform and Opening-up, Jiang Zemin carried out a CCP version of the "three withdrawals" in China, meaning the CCP completely withdrew from the three responsibilities of pensions, medical care, and education. During the Hu Jintao era, however, efforts were made to reclaim these three responsibilities. Hu Jintao indeed used the maximum power at his disposal to rebuild China's welfare system and seek benefits for the farming class. Perhaps if Li Keqiang had succeeded him at that time and remained a member of the commoner faction, China's welfare today would indeed be much better than it is now.
During Hu Jintao's tenure, he promoted the Scientific Outlook on Development, which to some extent was a countermeasure against Jiang Zemin's elitist faction logic of sacrificing the grassroots population and farmers indefinitely for the sake of development. Judging by the results, this Scientific Outlook on Development, which cared for the grassroots people and farmers, did not slow down China's economic development. Statistically speaking, Hu Jintao's tenure was China's most glorious era. The GDP growth rate during Hu Jintao's period surpassed that of all five generations of leaders. Moreover, within these limited powers, China also faced three or four major crises, which the combination of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao handled quite well. One was the 2003 SARS outbreak, another was the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, and the third was the 2008 financial crisis. At the time, it was hard to tell how well Hu and Wen were doing regarding these three disasters. However, as the saying goes, without comparison there is no hurt: the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and the SARS outbreak in 2003 turned out to be worlds apart. Furthermore, I believe that even if there were an earthquake tomorrow, Xi Jinping would never rush to the front line. In fact, Xi Jinping rarely appears in disaster areas during floods. This again forms a sharp contrast with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, who generally rushed to the front lines back then. As for the financial crisis, we don't even need to consider whether Xi Jinping could solve a global financial crisis today; without waiting for a global economic crisis, Xi Jinping has already nearly brought China into an economic crisis.
Also in 2008, China hosted the Beijing Olympic Games, with a large number of foreign leaders visiting, and China truly experienced a wave of a great power's golden age. Yet not long ago, at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the number of attending foreign leaders could be counted on one hand, and most of them were good brothers of authoritarian countries, presenting a genuine picture of isolation. Of course, many people still criticize the rampant corruption during the Hu-Wen era, the overbearing and lawless corrupt officials, and the soaring housing prices. However, I believe these were not things Hu Jintao alone could determine. For instance, regarding the housing issue, the central government successively issued the "National Eight Articles" in 2005, the "National Six Articles" in 2006, and the "National Ten Articles" along with purchase restrictions in 2010 to control housing prices, but the effects were quite concerning. At the time, public opinion mocked it as "adjusting nine times in ten years, the more it's adjusted, the higher it goes." But this issue lay not primarily in policy direction errors, but in Hu Jintao's actual lack of control over local governments.
As for the issue of abusive police, the Beijing black jails and the Re-education Through Labor system, which were heavily criticized at the time, were actually beyond Hu Jintao's ability to intervene. These were completely controlled by Zhou Yongkang and Luo Gan, functioning as their personal fiefdoms. Even if Hu Jintao wanted to intervene and reform, he could neither get his hands in nor reform them. Regarding corruption, Hu Jintao himself had little to be blamed for personally. If he wanted to crack down on corruption, naturally he could not touch Jiang Zemin's interests, and the only thing he could do himself was to engage in less corruption. Indeed, as later disclosed by the Panama Papers, a large number of high-ranking officials within the CCP were involved, and Jiang Zemin's family in particular made a fortune, yet there were rarely any mentions of Hu Jintao's family.
Of course, Hu Jintao's period was not without problems. This problem remained Hu Jintao's old flaw, which was that he only knew how to blindly seek stability and pursue political mediocrity. Imbued with this mindset, Hu Jintao was extremely repulsive toward political reform, blindly pursuing only political stability. For instance, regarding internet public opinion, the decade of Hu Jintao's governance coincided with a surge in Chinese netizens from 50 million to 560 million, and official control over the internet during this stage was also clearly discernible. Starting around 2004 and 2005, internet management regulations began to be issued intensively, and the Golden Shield Project and the Great Firewall began to be continuously heightened. After the July 5th riots in Xinjiang in 2009, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were permanently blocked in China. In 2010, Google withdrew from China unable to bear the censorship. In 2011, the Wenzhou train collision occurred, after which Weibo public opinion spun out of control, and the central government began implementing real-name registration for Weibo, using the governance of rumors to control public opinion. During Hu Jintao's tenure, Liu Xiaobo also drafted Charter 08, and ultimately Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges of inciting subversion of state power. In 2011, the Jasmine Revolution also erupted in China, and Hu Jintao suppressed it using iron-fisted methods.
During Hu Jintao's tenure, political reform and democratic attempts remained an absolute red line. Ironically, perhaps the bravest act and the greatest democratic attempt during his term was his own push for Li Keqiang, yet it ended in failure. One act of courage resulted in a lifetime of self-imposed isolation. Furthermore, Hu Jintao's management of his subordinates was deeply flawed. During his 10-year term, he neither successfully elevated Li Keqiang nor fostered a political faction that was truly his own. In fact, Hu Jintao's excessive weakness was a key reason why Xi Jinping was able to achieve an unlimited term. He failed to play the role of checking Xi Jinping and ensuring his timely retirement. This may be one point that Deng Xiaoping failed to account for in all his calculations. A moderate and stability-seeking Hu Jintao could indeed better implement Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up policy, but he lacked the power to control the next generation of successors to ensure they continued to maintain those reforms.
How absurd was Hu Jintao's management and control over his subordinates? In the early hours of March 18, 2012, a Ferrari lost control and disintegrated on the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, and the driver died on the spot. Who was this deceased person? It was Ling Gu, the son of Ling Jihua, the Director of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee. There were also two Tibetan women in the car, and this incident immediately became a viral news story at the time. Ling Jihua had previously been the most trusted chief steward and a vital right-hand man to Hu Jintao. However, this car accident directly caused Ling Jihua to become desperate. According to inside information reported by several overseas media outlets, including the South China Morning Post and The New York Times, Ling Jihua, as Hu's right-hand man, knew the moment the accident happened that Hu Jintao would not help him and lacked the ability to do so. Consequently, Ling Jihua, having committed a grave error, reacted by quickly defecting to Zhou Yongkang. Zhou Yongkang was quite generous; he first paid to compensate and silence the two Tibetan girls, while simultaneously using the power of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission to help Ling Jihua suppress related posts. And what was the price Ling Jihua paid for defecting to Zhou Yongkang? It was that Ling Jihua had to help Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang seize power and disrupt the succession plan for Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang. Hu Jintao's leadership was indeed quite poor; at critical moments, he not only failed to gain the trust of his subordinates but, even after the incident involving Ling Jihua, he remained unaware of the Ferrari incident for a long time. It was not until Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, and Ling Jihua began their move to challenge the center that Hu Jintao realized what had happened. Later, his arrangements and appointments for the Youth League faction were an even greater failure.
In November 2012, at the 18th National Congress of the CCP, Wang Yang and Li Yuanchao failed to enter the Politburo Standing Committee. In the 2012 Standing Committee of 7, only Li Keqiang was from the Youth League faction. The Hu Jintao faction (Youth League) had only 1 General Secretary and 6 Standing Committee members, which was even less than Jiang Zemin, who had been retired for 10 years. The succession team arranged by Hu Jintao included Sun Zhengcai, born in 1963, a member of the Politburo and Party Secretary of Chongqing, who was placed under investigation in July 2017 and sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery in May 2018. Hu Chunhua, born in 1963, a member of the Politburo and Party Secretary of Guangdong, entered the central government at the 20th National Congress in 2022 and moved to the CPPCC in March 2023. Sun Zhengcai fell due to bribery in 2017, and Hu Chunhua stopped at the Central Committee level in 2022, now only able to survive by being a sycophant to Xi Jinping.
Furthermore, in 2012, in order to maintain the system and demonstrate his high moral character, Hu Jintao engaged in a "naked retirement," which basically sealed his fate of being pushed aside. As the former greatest enemy of the Xi Jinping faction, now that you have lost power, the comrades of the Xi Jinping faction would naturally find ways to humiliate you. Hu Jintao lived his life trembling and walking on thin ice, becoming President by seeking stability and moderation, but in the end, he fell because of these very traits.
Of course, from another perspective, from the people's point of view, this weakness of Hu Jintao was not entirely a bad thing. When we consider a national leader, we often have a mindset of longing for a "benevolent ruler" or a "strongman," believing that leaders like Emperor Wu of Han or Qin Shi Huang who have the final say are the best. But if you look back at China's development history, the degree of centralization versus the average annual GDP growth rate for the five generations of leaders is: Mao Zedong 6.4%, Deng Xiaoping 9.5%, Jiang Zemin 9.7%, Hu Jintao 10.6%, and Xi Jinping 6.0%. The GDP growth during the terms of the five generations of Chinese leaders is actually not determined by the ability or merit of the ruler, but by the degree of centralization. Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong are the most centralized and powerful CCP leaders, but the economic growth during their terms is also the lowest. Relatively speaking, Hu Jintao was the weakest, yet he presided over the fastest economic development among the five generations of leaders.
Jiang Zemin and Deng Xiaoping ranked in the middle in terms of centralization and growth rate. It is actually not surprising that this pattern exists. During Hu Jintao’s era, due to the system of "nine dragons ruling the water," his decrees failed to get out of Zhongnanhai, and the central government's administrative efficiency became extremely low. However, this system led to a decline in administrative efficiency, which in turn restricted the opportunities for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to interfere in China's economy, making it much harder for the CCP to do evil. If Hu Jintao had been very strong and capable of being a supreme leader who integrated the nine dragons, and had acted like Xi Jinping—pretending to be foolish before taking office and acting aggressively afterward—that actually might not have been a good thing for the people, because you could not ensure that the decisions he made afterward would be correct, even if his intentions might have been good. Under a dictatorship, inaction is the best action. Reform and opening-up is essentially not about the government interfering less.
Let us imagine a weak Hu Jintao, who was also a leader relatively connected to and respectful of the grassroots populace; this brought the governance results of the CCP's system to a ceiling. Under the CCP's system, it is hard to imagine choosing a supreme leader superior to Hu Jintao. But let us think further: was such a Hu Jintao era really the best era for China? Compared to the current China, Hu Jintao's era was certainly much, much better. Yet it was still an era rampant with corruption and powerful elites. What we actually want is a highly developed and fair society—this is the ideal society in the hearts of Chinese people. This obviously cannot be solved by simply returning to Hu Jintao's era; rather, completely destroying the CCP's dictatorship and establishing a democratic China is the only way out for the Chinese people and China's future.