Still unclear on Hu's successor

For example, before the holding of the annual plenary session of the Communist Party's Central Committee last week, China-watchers were almost unanimous in predicting that Vice President Xi Jinping would be promoted during the session and made a vice chairman of the party's Central Military Commission.

President Hu Jintao is the chairman and making Xi vice chairman would confirm expectations that he is the heir apparent.

Well, that didn't happen. As a result, attention has shifted to why Xi was not promoted. Various possibilities are being considered. They range from President Hu resisting efforts to have Xi confirmed as his successor to speculation that the party may be going towards greater democracy and that future leaders will be chosen by election.

What it boils down to is that the party is still evolving institutions for transitioning from one leader to another.

This has always been a problem in Communist countries. In China, the first-generation leader, Chairman Mao Zedong, served for life, holding power from 1949, when the People's Republic of China was established, until his death in 1976.

Mao had previously removed one handpicked successor after another. Liu Shaoqi died in prison in 1969 after being purged in the Cultural Revolution. The next successor, Lin Biao, was killed in a plane crash, ostensibly while trying to flee to the Soviet Union after failing in an attempt to assassinate Mao.

Deng Xiaoping, who became China's leader after edging aside Mao's last handpicked successor, Hua Guofeng, also got rid of two intended successors, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, with the latter kept under house arrest from 1989 until his death in 2005.

Indeed, the transition from Jiang Zemin-endorsed by Deng after Zhao's downfall-to the current leader, Hu Jintao, was the first in the People's Republic's history to have been achieved peacefully, without death or violence. Hu, too, was chosen by Deng as the leader of China's fourth generation, succeeding Jiang.

That is why Hu's actions are being so carefully scrutinized now to see if he is strengthening the creation of institutions that will result in greater transparency and stability, or the opposite.

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