Hu ally to head top personnel body

China has named Li Yuanchao (李源潮), Chinese Communist Party (CCP) boss in Jiangsu Province, as head of the powerful Organization Department, state media reported yesterday, a move that strengthens President Hu Jintao's (胡錦濤) control over personnel.

The Organization Department is in charge of investigating candidates for appointments and promotions, giving it access to information on the careers of high-ranking officials and making it a nerve center for political jockeying.

The appointment gives Hu greater control over who gets what job in the party, something Hu will need to build support for his choice of potential successor when he begins stepping down from office five years from now.

Li took the position from He Guoqiang (賀國強), who was named earlier this week to the nine-man Politburo Standing Committee that rules China.

The head of the Organization Department before him, Vice President Zeng Qinghong (曾慶紅), was also a Politburo Standing Committee member, signalling that Li, 56, may yet rise to the CCP's main circle of power.

Li, who has a doctorate in law and is seen as pro-business and experienced working with private enterprise, catapulted into the 25-member Politburo on Monday, following the close of the CCP's five-yearly Congress.

He began his political rise in the Shanghai branch of the Communist Youth League, an organization once headed by Hu and that is still seen as the president's power base.

Li moved on to the Youth League's secretariat in Beijing, where he worked briefly with Hu.

Hu emerged from the Congress in stronger shape than before, but not without having made compromises on some appointments.

Those included the elevation to the party's all-powerful nine-member Politburo Standing Committee of two men considered close to Zeng, who stepped down from the committee, but is expected to continue to influence Chinese politics through his allies there.

Another league veteran and Hu loyalist, Li Keqiang (李克強), was promoted all the way to the Politburo Standing Committee although not placed in a ranking that marks him as the clear heir apparent.

Meanwhile, former Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee (李柱銘) said yesterday he did not support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, after coming under attack for urging the US to use the event to press China on human rights.

Lee has received a barrage of criticism from pro-Beijing politicians over an article he wrote in the Wall Street Journal last Thursday entitled "China's Olympics Opportunity."

In the piece, Lee called on US President George W. Bush to: "Use the next 10 months to press for a significant improvement of basic human rights in my country, including press, assembly and religious freedoms.

"How does it profit our nation if it wins gold medals but suffers from the continued absence of democracy, human rights and the rule of law?" the article said.

Pro-Beijing politicians seized on the comments, saying Lee was inviting foreign interference in China's internal affairs.

But Lee said he was merely echoing calls by Beijing officials for human rights improvements from the Games.