China has reshuffled its military top brass in a move analysts said yesterday was probably aimed at ensuring President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) remains commander-in-chief of the military after a 10-yearly leadership change.
At a top Chinese Communist Party meeting on Sunday, Hu oversaw the promotion of generals Fan Changlong (范長龍) and Xu Qiliang (許其亮) as vice chairmen of the powerful 12-member Central Military Commission (CMC), Xinhua news agency said.
Hu, the CMC chairman, is set to step down as head of the ruling party at a congress starting this week and will retire as national president in March next year as part of the leadership change.
Photo: Reuters
However, Willy Lam (林和立), a China politics expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said: “Hu Jintao would want to serve another five years [as CMC chief], particularly given the fact that he has to watch over his political proteges ... and protect his political legacy.”
“As long as he is the CMC chief, he will still be the power behind the throne,” Lam said.
According to Lu Siqing (盧四清) head of the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, which seeks to advance political reform in China, both promoted generals have close ties to Hu.
Xu is the first air force general to become a vice chairman of the committee, and his ascension also reflects the importance China places on quickly developing its air capability.
China’s 2.3 million-strong military forces include nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and a recently commissioned second-hand aircraft carrier purchased from Ukraine.
The two incoming CMC vice chairmen will be tasked with pushing forward the modernization of the military and overseeing the increasingly powerful arsenal.
Unlike most modern states the military is directly run by the ruling party, not by the government, an arrangement that stems from the revolution that brought the party to power in 1949.
Mao Zedong (毛澤東) — who said that “power comes from the barrel of the gun” — used the People’s Liberation Army not only to advance revolution, but also to protect the party’s political power, Lam said.
Hu took over control of the party from former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) in 2002 but, as part of China’s opaque and secretive political process, only succeeded him as CMC chairman in 2004.
There was also a possibility that Hu would only retain the CMC chairmanship for an extra two years, Lam said, long enough to let him influence the naming of the future heir to Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), his own successor as party head and president.
He could also protect his protege, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (李克強), who is set to take the place of outgoing Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), and seek to place other key allies in top posts at the 19th Party Congress in 2017, Lam said.
Xi was effectively chosen as China’s next core leader in 2007 in a selection process heavily influenced by Jiang, who had already stepped down.
In a statement, Lu said: “Hu Jintao will seek to continue on as chairman of the Central Military Commission for another five years until 2017.”
“This is due to worries over Xi Jinping among a lot of people in the higher levels of the military,” he said.
Xi was named a CMC vice chairman in 2010 in a rocky approval process that reportedly took more than a year to complete.
“If Hu Jintao retains his seat for another year or so, this certainly maintains the previous political practice,” Kenneth Jarrett, a China-based director for the APCO Worldwide consultancy, told reporters.
“But I would say it’s not good for China in the sense that you have a divided leadership, where you have Hu Jintao who will have the allegiance of the military at the very top even though he has given up all of his other positions,” he said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS