A steward tries to lift Hu Jintao from his seat, but Hu doesn’t want to move. The former Communist party leader is sitting to the left of current boss Xi Jinping, and he reaches out to take Xi’s notes, but Xi moves Hu’s hand away and takes back the papers. The world’s cameras follow every move, as Hu is eventually raised to his feet. There are two stewards now, one holding him firmly under the arm, the other gesturing for him to leave. But Hu is clearly reluctant to go, leaning over and saying something to an impassive-looking Xi, who nods and gives a brief reply to Hu without looking directly at him. Hu then taps the shoulder of Premier Li Keqiang, who is sitting on Xi’s right. Li looks uneasy, turning briefly to watch Hu being ushered from the hall.
Hu’s son, Hu Haifeng, the party secretary of Lishui in Zhejiang province, was in the audience as he is also a delegate to the congress
By the standards of Communist party meetings, this is high drama. Communist party get-togethers are usually tightly choreographed events, scripted well in advance and with very little left to chance. Much of the congress took place behind closed doors, but the spectacle of Hu’s apparent expulsion from the hall took place at the closing session of the congress Saturday, in the full glare of television cameras. As is usual practice, journalists had been let in to film the finale, and what a finale it was.
What exactly does it mean? Hu, 79-years old, was Xi’s immediate predecessor. He was easy to spot in the hall, one of the few on the leadership benches with grey hair – black hair dye is usually de rigueur among the old party elite. He looked confused, unsteady on his feet, leading to speculation that he might be ill, that it was possibly some kind of medical emergency. He had reportedly looked frail earlier in the congress, only able to walk with assistance.
Others have speculated that it was a very symbolic power play, a very public purge. The week-long congress has given Xi an unprecedented third term in power and cemented his grip on the party. He has stacked the party’s top decision-making bodies with his loyalists. But it is impossible to know what was said behind closed doors – and what, if any, role Hu played in those discussions. Hu’s time in office was very different from that of Xi’s, characterised by a far more collective form of leadership, one that Xi has now swept away. Was the physical removal of a man who represented an earlier era, a cruel but symbolic gesture by Xi? The problem with that theory is that the party rarely airs its dirty linen in public.
Xi’s preferred method of removing rivals is via anti-corruption investigations, using a fig leaf of legality as a cover for purging those he sees as threatening his rule. In the run-up to the congress, he targeted China’s internal security apparatus, even removing top officials who had been his enforcers earlier in his leadership.
It is true that former top leaders can be a troublesome species. Just days before the congress, China’s oldest retired Communist party leader appeared to take a swipe at Xi. One-hundred-and-five-year-old Song Ping set tongues wagging in Beijing after saying in a video that reform and opening are ‘the only path to the development and progress of contemporary China’. Xi is abandoning that path, tightening the party’s grip on every aspect of life and turning the party into an instrument of aggressive ethnic nationalism. Another potential irritant, Jiang Zemin, the Communist party boss before Hu Jintao, is now 96 years old and did not make an appearance at the congress.
Hu’s very public removal from the hall will no doubt be fodder for China watchers worldwide as they try to understand the party’s opaque ways. Perhaps Hu is just ill and took a nasty turn; that is certainly what Xinhua, China’s state news agency, hinted at on Saturday, tweeting that Hu had insisted on being present, ‘despite the fact that he has been taking time out to recuperate recently’. All the same, it was highly humiliating for Hu and at the very least it is highly symbolic of the vast change in China’s governance since he was in charge. Interestingly, Hu’s son, Hu Haifeng, the party secretary of Lishui in Zhejiang province, was in the audience as he is also a delegate to the congress. If his father is in political trouble, then it will probably embroil his family – such is the nature of party vindictiveness. Young Hu’s future will be watched for clues about his father.
Look beyond the immediate action in the video clips and the massed ranks of the party faithful are sitting to attention and following every move. They look like they can hardly believe what is going on, and beyond their Covid masks there is shock and disbelief – and perhaps that is exactly as Xi would have it.
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