SMACKDOWN
Global politics is a bare-knuckle arena. Hu is set to debut in the U.S., but is he ready to bust heads of state? Here's the tale of the tape:
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Age: 55
Ht: 182 cm Wt: 86 kg
Right-handed
1-0 (Afghan TKO)
Has the eye of the tiger, or maybe just a Texas squint. Vulnerable to salted snack foods and intractable Middle East conflicts
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Age: 55
Ht: 162 cm
Wt: Don't ask
Right-handed
0-0 (all bouts canceled)
Canny rope-a-dope or inability to move under her own power? She's not saying. Anything
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Age: 60
Ht: 166 cm
Wt: 83 kg
Right-handed
1,253-0 (all bouts at home)
Unbeaten in Pyongyang, omnipotence diminishes on the road. Arsenal includes lethally sharp pompadour, gigantic head, chemical weapons
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Age: 60
Ht: 169 cm
Wt: 60 kg
Right-handed
0-235 (can't win in the Diet)
Former fan favorite spends most of his time KO'd. Weaker than the Japanese economy, he's a loss away from saying sayonara
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Age: 55
Ht: 150 cm
Wt: 43 kg
Right-handed
1-1 (beat Estrada, lost to Abu Sayyaf)
Feisty little scrapper bores opponents into submission
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Age: 59
Ht: 175 cm
Wt: 75 kg
Right-handed
0-0
He can dance like an angel, but can he control the ring? Opponents quail before his nonthreatening blandness
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Cover Story: Taking the Helm
Hu Jintao scaled China's treacherous political heights by playing it safe. Now that the presidency is in his grasp, will he reveal his true colors?
Viewpoint: Big Country, Small Changes
China's next leader may not have what it takes to effect political reform
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Do you think Hu Jintao can effect meaningful reform in China?
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Taking the Helm
His job is all the harder thanks to his uneasy relationship with Jiang Zemin. It's a classic "successor's dilemma" that has faced every Chinese leader in the modern age: the need to maneuver his own people into power without undermining the senior generation that currently supports him. Jiang plans to keep a strong behind-the-scenes presence even after surrendering most of his titles, much as Deng Xiaoping oversaw national affairs as honorary chairman of the China Bridge Association. Jiang is trying to ease his top aide, Zeng Qinghong, onto the party's all-powerful Standing Committee where he can protect Jiang's old comrades from corruption scandals or from losing their posts to Hu's men. Most worrisome, Jiang wants to retain control over every Chinese leader's most important power base: the military. Hu's relations with Jiang, always cordial but not close, could easily turn antagonistic. "Jiang plans to be the Pope of the party," says Wu Guoguang, a former government official purged in 1989, and if Hu resists, the struggle "could even lead to the party's collapse."
The Leader Who Killed the CCP is probably not how Hu, decades hence, wants history to remember him. It's a wonder history has noticed him at all. Hu was born in Shanghai in 1942 to a family fallen from grace. His tea-merchant forebears established a booming trade across several coastal provinces, but by the time Hu was toddling what had been a string of outlets during the Qing dynasty had unraveled into a single Shanghai shophouse. The Hu family moved to Jiangsu province, where Hu tested into the best high school in town and, in 1959, won entry into prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing.
China's future leader, known for his stiffness in public, waltzed into campus politics. He joined the Communist Youth League—a training ground for party members—and became its secretary for the school's dance troupe. A former classmate recalls Hu as a performer: "Dancers portrayed the workers on campus. To revolutionary music they mopped floors, wiped windows, struck heroic poses. I'd never have thought one of them would lead China one day." Offstage, Hu and his chums organized ballroom dancing parties where he showed off a competent foxtrot. He joined the Communist Party, graduated in 1965 with a degree in hydraulic engineering and won a job at the university as a teacher and "political instructor" responsible for indoctrinating students in Marxist theory. In 1968, during the chaotic Cultural Revolution, he was sent to remote and impoverished Gansu province to build houses for peasants displaced by a new dam.
His presence in Gansu earned him notice—imagine a Harvard graduate in a West Virginia coal mine. His patron became the provincial party chief, Song Ping, a former revolutionary so conservative he would later read Chairman Mao's eulogy. Song elevated Hu in 1982 to his first national post—vice secretary of the Communist Youth League. He rose to top leader two years later and found himself in a clutch of China's most reform-minded officials. His mentor became party chief Hu Yaobang, a short, balding man who had fought in the revolution and was known for his sharp sense of humor. The elder Hu was trying to pair economic reforms with greater political openness, and he met with his young protégé for long strategy sessions.
Hu Jintao played a modest but important role in promoting reform. The Youth League ran one of China's most popular national newspapers, the China Youth Daily. A year after his return to Beijing, Hu used the organ to help his mentor curb a campaign launched by party conservatives against "bourgeois liberalism." Hu also helped air out China's campuses by organizing ballroom dancing parties across the country in defiance of conservative complaints that boys and girls bumping front parts was improper. "He was pragmatic, open-minded and succeeded in getting rid of the radical remnants that gripped young Chinese for nearly a decade," says Fred Hu, director of Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, who knew Hu in the Vice President's days as a student leader (they are unrelated).
The best hint at the kind of national leadership style Hu could exhibit came in his next post: party chief of remote Guizhou province. In 1985, at a time when many leaders had scant idea how ordinary Chinese lived, Hu frequently visited people's homes. Shortly after arriving he dropped by the apartment of a Qinghua classmate. Finding his friend out, he lingered for two hours sipping tea and chatting with his parents. "Only after he left did the parents slowly realize that he was the new party secretary," says Fred Hu.
Guizhou also provided Hu's most severe test. Students across China, encouraged by Hu Yaobang's political reform movement, began pro-democracy demonstrations in late 1986. Students at Guizhou University, a lush and languorous campus on the outskirts of Hu's capital, suddenly occupied the main lecture hall. As a sense of crisis gripped the leadership in Beijing, Hu personally visited the campus and persuaded the students to leave. His soft-line success worked to his favor—much as Jiang Zemin would benefit from peacefully resolving demonstrations in Shanghai in 1989 while serving as party chief. Hu "did a beautiful job winning over the students by treating them as equals," says Ge Shiru, a Guizhou-based writer who followed the events.
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