The Hu Jintao incident

A storm in a teacup

A big deal was made out of Hu Jintao being escorted out of the CCP’s big congress meeting. It was even compared to Saddam Hussein’s public purge. Chinese stocks crashed after the incident. 

But it all seemed a bit strange to me, didn’t we already know for years that Xi had consolidated power in China when his third term announcement went pretty much unopposed? Why was everyone making such a big deal over this? It was common knowledge that Hu Jintao had little influence going into this meeting. 

Then a few days ago another video with more details leading up to the event was released by a Singapore news agency. Confirming my suspicion that this was all a big nothingburger.

Normally I don’t write these political analyses as it is not really my specialty. And I don’t feel like I have much value to offer. But this situation seems so straight forward, and it kind of annoys me how wrong everyone gets it. Media outlets jump to the “OMG it's a purge!” conclusion because it probably is more sensational. Even though that explanation doesn’t really make sense.

Let’s start with what with some basic observations:

• CCP Congress meetings are highly planned and choreographed events.

• Hu being escorted out did not seem planned as Xi seems visibly annoyed by the whole incident and is seen explaining to his bodyguard what to do for about 20 seconds.

• The CCP official stance to the West is that they are also a democracy (yeah LOL I know), publicly purging senior members of the CCP for the camera’s would not fit into this strategy.

• Generally Chinese politicians settle things behind closed doors and not in public. Appearance of unity in the CCP is very important to them.

• Hu Jintao seemed to have become upset by something he read in one of the papers that were in front of him.

• Li Zhanshu, sitting to the right of Hu then tries to distract him from his papers and reassure him. 

• Xi seems to specifically explain to the bodyguard what to do with Hu’s papers. 

• Li Keqiang, a protege of Hu, tries to ignore the whole situation as hard as possible, staring straight ahead. He probably does not want to be dragged into it.  

• Hu is not nearly as powerful as a lot of newspapers say he is. He was kind of a lame duck leader and his wings have been largely clipped during Xi’s reign. So the “purge” has already happened years ago.

• Fewer members of Hu’s faction are included in Xi’s new line-up.

• The incident was heavily censored in China, so it wasn’t for the home audience. Unlike the Saddam Hussein public purge.

• Hu was led out moments before the big vote.

Based on these observations I think we can rule out that this was planned. This implies that Xi was reacting to something that Hu was doing or saying and it was a spur of the moment thing. What to me is the simplest and most likely explanation is that Hu is suffering from some degenerative mental disease like Parkinson’s. 

He was the only one that had to be escorted in. A cue had to be given for him to sit down. And as Xi finishes his speech here you can see everyone clapping while looking straight ahead except Hu, who looks vaguely confused at Xi while smiling. And Xi does not seem to take offence at this and smiles back. 

I think Hu forgot where he was, or he forgot that he is no longer China’s leader. Or he simply forgot that some of his people were not included in the new line up and started protesting. Dementia tends to reduce a person’s inhibitions as well as memory. This also explains why they tried to take the folder away from him. Hoping that he would just forget about the issue again.

About 35 seconds into this video you can also see that Xi looks like he wants to say something to Hu, then changes his mind, looks visibly annoyed and signals to his bodyguard to come over.

Further supporting the Dementia hypothesis:

• Hu Jintao was rumoured in 2015 already to suffer from Parkinson’s (delete cookies to read the article) and in 2021 as well.

• He has rarely been seen in public in the past decade.

• Why would Xi allow the document with names in front of Hu in the first place? Hu probably had already agreed with it, but dementia caused him to forget about that and act impulsively.

• Breaking unity publicly like this is a taboo in the CCP, and not something a former leader who still has all his mental capacities would do.

• Xi would probably have publicly purged others like Li Keqiang or Song Ping who have recently openly criticised him. You can even see him suspiciously look over to Li Keqiang here, to see if he has anything to do with it.

• Li Zhanshu (before being tapped by Wang Huning) wouldn’t attempt to walk out with Hu if this was a purge. Li Zhanshu is one of the more senior members of Xi’s clique. He would probably be in the know if it was.

• Hu at some point tries to grab Xi’s papers and generally looks confused.

Nothing about this incident looks like it was planned. It looks quite messy, and actually does not make Xi look good. There are multiple clues that Hu isn’t all there mentally. The simplest explanation is that Hu had an episode of dementia. Li Zhanshu tried to stabilise the situation, and when it looked like it wasn’t working, Xi told his bodyguard to escort Hu out so he wouldn’t ruin the vote.

And the reason few people looked over was not to embarrass Hu any further. And because they don’t want to be implicated. Often to avoid someone losing even more face when social conventions are broken is to pretend it isn’t happening as much as possible and not stare. And it doesn’t seem likely that Xi would all of a sudden impulsively decide to “send a message”.

Probably few want to make this argument since it kind of makes you look like a Chinese shill. And it isn’t as sensational and doesn’t sell as many newspapers. But in my opinion this incident doesn’t really change anything meaningfully about the Chinese political situation. It is still the same autocracy with Xi being the all powerful leader. It seems quite irrational that stocks have sold off because of this.