Hu Jintao

TOKYO -- In perhaps the most dramatic moment of the 2022 Chinese Communist Party national congress, former President Hu Jintao was escorted out of the.

BEIJING: An "unusual" scene at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China sent the media into a guessing game on what happened to former ...

The media went wild, speculating that Hu was unwell, suffering from dementia or that he was forced to leave due to power struggle within the party. As the media entered the venue halfway through the meeting, Hu was seen being helped to leave his seat. At the closing ceremony of the congress Saturday (Oct 22), Hu - the predecessor of Xi Jinping - was seen being escorted out of the auditorium of the Great Hall of the People here, where the event was held.

China's President Xi Jinping (right) sits beside Premier Li Keqiang (left) as former president Hu Jintao (centre) is assisted to leave from the closing ceremony ...

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He was led off the Communist Party's highest stage in a very public spectacle. Is he ill, or is it President Xi Jinping flexing his giant political muscle ...

Hu is the leader of the group called “tuanpai” or populists, comprising members with a Communist Youth League background. Ever since Xi came to power, his group of “princelings”, or the children of the revolutionaries, have systematically marginalised the other groups in the Party — the tuanpai, as well as the “Shanghai Gang”, which is led by Jiang Zemin (who preceded Hu as president and Party general secretary), and Zheng Qinghong (who was Xi Jinping’s predecessor as first secretary of the CCP central secretariat). It seemed very likely that the intention was to ask Hu to leave the stage in full public view.

The former president is escorted off stage during the Party Congress, with no explanation given.

He also reaffirmed China's right to use force to seize the self-ruled island of Taiwan. Hu Jintao represents a very different China to that of Xi Jinping. He attended the earlier closed-door session on the last day of the Congress, then cameras were allowed in for the final portion of the day. The Communist Party's mass meetings are normally highly scripted events, leading to speculation that the timing of Hu Jintao's departure might not have been an accident. Why in front of the cameras? There are a lot of questions and no answers so far from the Chinese government.

Former Chinese president Hu Jintao was unexpectedly escorted out of the closing ceremony of a congress of the ruling Communist Party on Saturday (Oct 22).

Looking distressed, Hu appeared to resist leaving as the stewards escorted him out, turning back to his seat at one point. Video footage published by AFP showed a steward repeatedly trying to lift Hu from his seat, drawing concerned looks from officials seated nearby. Hu, 79, Xi Jinping's immediate predecessor, was seated to the left of Xi.

Why was Hu Jintao asked to leave the stage at the end of China's Communist Party congress?

It does not include Li Keqiang or Wang Yang, both seen as economic liberals, both linked to the ideas of the former administration. It was just after the cameras had set up that officials approached Mr Hu and indicated that he should go. A longer edit of the footage taken on Saturday shows Xi Jinping turning to the former party chairman and also, to Mr Hu's left, senior figures Li Zhanshu and Wang Huning appearing concerned. The current government has encouraged an explosion in nationalist sentiment, showing little concern for what anyone else thinks about its handling of anything. Why in front of the cameras? What did he say to the man who replaced him, Xi Jinping, which prompted a nod from China's current leader?

China's 20th Party Congress concluded on Saturday with a rare and shocking piece of live drama. Hu Jintao, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ...

Xu Caihou, a high-ranking military official, was [detained](https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/12/06/special-measures/detention-and-torture-chinese-communist-partys-shuanggui-system?gclid=Cj0KCQjwqc6aBhC4ARIsAN06NmMYqNpnBf4ZBCD2foKElOiTP4KtQid9B2VOy4g4La_qX9mI-QoFfe0aAn_CEALw_wcB) in 2014 in the middle of cancer treatment, and died the next year. [extremely harsh](https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/19/china-party-congress-xi-jinping-speech/) language in his opening work report to describe the situation within the party when he took over, speaking of a “slide toward weak, hollow, and watered-down party leadership in practice,” though without mentioning Hu or others by name. (Hu’s contribution to Marxist theory, the Scientific Outlook on Development, also got a token mention in Xi’s speech.) Humiliating Hu in this fashion would also send a clear signal to the “ [retired elders](https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/13/china-xi-jinping-succession-ccp-party-congress-elders/),” the former high-level leaders who long remained a force within the party, that Xi’s power was unbound. But the third and most disturbing possibility is that it was planned, and we just witnessed Xi deliberately and publicly humiliate his predecessor—possibly as a precursor to wielding the tools of party discipline, followed by judicial punishment, against him. The initial list of Central Committee names—the roughly 200 people who will nominally decide the Standing Committee, the core of the leadership, in meetings Saturday and announce it Sunday—is missing Li Keqiang, the current premier and a protégé of Hu’s, and other relative economic reformers such as Wang Yang and Liu He. Hu was associated with a power network of former leaders, like himself, of the Communist Youth League; that faction appears to have been [effectively destroyed](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/world/asia/china-communist-youth-league.html). That could have been a remark by Hu to his former colleagues backstage or perhaps even signs of dementia that caused a sudden panic that something might go wrong. Since stepping down as CCP leader in 2012, when Hu was lauded by party media for—in a stark contrast to Xi—relinquishing power, he has been largely off the stage. Hu was seated in a prominent position next to current CCP leader Xi Jinping, and the incident was caught on camera; he appeared to ask Xi and Premier Li Keqiang a question, to which they both nodded, while Xi prevented him from taking some papers by placing his hand on them. [visibly frail](https://twitter.com/aaronMCN/status/1583775726138195970) during the Party Congress. The second possibility is that information suddenly came up that made Xi—who would have had to personally approve any such move—afraid that Hu might abstain or even vote against him in the rounds of otherwise unanimous voting that finished off the Party Congress. That wasn’t out of any great commitment to liberalism on Hu’s part but because most party members were more occupied with making money than with enforcing the party line.

Hu's departure was left unexplained, and the nation's censors appeared to quickly scrub any recent references to him from the internet.

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Today, we were given an unexpected detail. In the middle of today's session of the 20th Communist Party Congress, former General Secretary Hu Jintao was ...

Unfortunately, the speculation and rumormongering about Hu are a product of the secrecy of the party itself. The more important piece of information that has emerged from the congress has to do with personnel—the shuffling of party leaders into the elite decision-making bodies: the party’s Central Committee, Politburo, and Politburo Standing Committee. As of this writing, all signs suggest the party leadership will be completely dominated by Xi, in a way it hasn’t been in the first 10 years of his rule. Hu’s 10-year tenure has previously been described in the West as a “lost decade” for China, a period in which both and economic and political reform largely stalled. This would be dramatic indeed, but making such a gesture at the congress itself would be cruel and unnecessary. Still, as James Palmer of Foreign Policy noted [earlier today](https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/22/china-xi-jinping-hu-jintao-ccp-congress/), Hu Jintao poses little threat to Xi at this point, given his age and declining stature in the system. During the remainder of the congress, Xi will install loyalists at the top levels of the party and claim a third term as general secretary. I have seen juicier interpretations still—such as that Hu was actively being purged at that very moment and would soon be charged with corruption and formally investigated by the party’s disciplinary apparatus. Having Hu literally pulled away could be a way for Xi to signal his dominance and send a message to other elites and the public. Hu, and his allies and protégés, represent a more technocratic, moderate arm of the party—one decidedly less repressive, and more open to the outside world. Hu’s feeble exit from stage is a sad symbol of the current trajectory of Chinese politics. In the middle of today’s session of the 20th Communist Party Congress, former General Secretary Hu Jintao was abruptly escorted off stage.