Ex-Leader Wins in Beijing Power Play
Party Elder Jiang Had Heavy Hand In the Selection
BEIJING—In the chess game of Chinese politics, the new Communist Party leadership unveiled on Thursday may have been the last gambit of a grand master: the 86-year-old former president and party general secretary, Jiang Zemin.
Mr. Jiang was thought to be on his death bed last year, but shook off his illness and a potentially damaging scandal to ensure that the new seven-man Politburo Standing Committee—the top governing body—is once again dominated by his protégés and allies.
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And the next move in the game belongs to Mr. Hu, whose allies lost out in the battle for Standing Committee seats this year but are in prime spots to join the body in 2017, according to party insiders and political analysts.
In giving up his post as head of the Central Military Commission, Mr. Hu indicated that he would not retain the same level of influence as Mr. Jiang, who retained the military post for two years after retiring as party chief in 2002.
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But only Mr. Xi and Li Keqiang, the expected future premier who is Mr. Hu's main ally, will remain on the body after 2017—as all the five incoming members will be able to serve just one five-year term for age reasons—raising the prospect of another shift in the factional balance of power.
Mr. Jiang is seen as the figurehead of a loose grouping of leaders, many of whom are princelings, while Mr. Hu heads a rival grouping, most of whose members don't have any revolutionary ancestry and rose instead through the ranks of the Communist Youth League.
"The new Standing Committee is not balanced," said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution. "There will be a backlash against Jiang Zemin and his princeling faction."
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