Word: hu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...snakes through the gates of Zhongnanhai, the sprawling headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party, which occupies the southwestern corner of Beijing's Forbidden City. The limousines bear the 22 members of the party's Political Bureau, or Politburo. In legend, Communist Party meetings are endless, but since 2002, when Hu Jintao became General Secretary of the party (he became President of China the next year), Politburo sessions have been quite brisk. Typically, they are over by lunchtime, and then two top academics are ushered in to brief the assembled leaders on trends in energy supply, patterns of urbanization or intellectual...
...study sessions are very much a product of Hu's leadership and personality, reflecting a methodical, consensus-seeking approach to problems. At the midpoint of what is expected to be a 10-year period in office, Hu can reasonably think that his low-key style has served China well and that he has done his best to manage the fissures that a quarter-century of breakneck economic growth have torn in Chinese society. But far, far more needs to be done to deal with the country's daunting list of crises--a ravaged environment, rising inflation, rampant corruption and widespread...
...Hu and the rest of China's leadership, a chance to start addressing those issues will come when the party's 17th Congress, the first in five years, opens in Beijing on Oct. 15. More than 2,000 party members will gather for a few days of factional maneuvering and backroom deals. New policies will be adopted and new appointments made to the Standing Committee of the Politburo--the nine-member inner Cabinet of China--but so opaque are China's politics that the tea-leaf readers will be busy for years. "Even when you know the names and positions...
...thing about the Congress seems assured: Hu, 64, will be re-elected to a second five-year term as party General Secretary. The former hydraulic engineer's sense of China's future is rooted in his own experiences. Though he came from a moderately prosperous family of tea merchants, Hu was thrust into the turmoil of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution soon after he graduated from Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University in 1964. Along with millions of others, he was sent to the countryside to "learn from the masses." After a year spent carrying bricks at a construction site...
...contrast to that of other leaders, many of whom were the children of senior officials based in Beijing, Hu's path took him through some of China's poorest regions. During spells in the western provinces of Guizhou and Gansu and later in Tibet, Hu is said to have displayed a concern for the less privileged that, analysts believe, lies at the root of his policies. He has made it clear he seeks to rein in the to-get-rich-is-glorious mentality that has gripped the nation since Deng Xiaoping launched China's economic reforms in the 1980s...