China's Hu seen further consolidating power

BEIJING, Oct 8: China's Communist Party chief Hu Jintao is seeking to cement his grip on power at a closed-door party meeting which began today while further chipping away at the residual influence of his predecessor, Jiang Zemin.

About 350 full and alternate members of the elite Central Committee opened a four-day plenary session which will decide the fate of Jiang ally Chen Liangyu, sacked as Shanghai party boss in September for channelling pension funds into illegal investments.

''It means that Hu Jintao is now more or less in full control, that the Jiang Zemin era has ended,'' Joseph Cheng, a China watcher at City University of Hong Kong, said of Chen's downfall.

Analysts expect the meeting to strip Chen of his party membership and possibly turn his case over for prosecution.

In a power play, Hu took on Shanghai, Jiang's political stronghold and China's financial hub, to root out official graft and instil loyalty. Chen's downfall crippled the ''Shanghai Gang'' of Jiang allies and proteges.

Chen and other independent-minded local leaders had defied the central government's moves to cool the overheating economy.

''Take one out as a warning to a hundred,'' political commentator Liang Kezhi said, quoting a Chinese saying.

Chen also lost his seat on the party's 24-member Politburo, the first member of the decision-making body to be dismissed since 1995 when Jiang purged and jailed Beijing party boss Chen Xitong. The two Chens are not related.

HARMONIOUS SOCIETY

The plenum, or full assembly, of China's ruling body is set to endorse Hu's doctrine of building a ''harmonious society'', which aims to embrace millions of Chinese left out of the country's economic boom. It will eventually replace Jiang's ''Three Represents'' theory, which opened the party's doors to private entrepreneurs.

The official Xinhua news agency defined a harmonious society as ''a democratic society under the rule of law, a society based on equality and justice, an honest and caring society, and a stable, vigorous and orderly society in which humans live in harmony with nature''.

Huang Zongliang, a Peking University professor, said Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries lost power because they distanced themselves from the masses, stuck to rigid rules, refused to make changes, neglected contradictions and violated laws of development.

The Communist Party ''should draw a lesson from them and avoid repeating their mistakes'', Xinhua quoted Huang as saying.

Analysts say Hu's doctrine is aimed at correcting Jiang's mistakes while keeping his prestige intact and resolving a plethora of problems held over from the Jiang era.

Reforms during Jiang's 13-year watch have been blamed for a yawning gap between rich and poor and between wealthy coastal regions and the impoverished hinterland.

Exorbitant medical, school and housing costs, land grabs and pollution spawn tens of thousands of protests a year.

The plenum, the sixth since Hu replaced Jiang as party chief in 2002, will also discuss policies aimed at expanding inner-party democracy, analysts said.

Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng has been named the city's acting party chief in an apparent attempt to contain any political fall-out from Chen's ousting.

The jockeying is not limited to Shanghai. In the run-up to the plenum, Hu appointed a political ally as governor of the southern province of Hunan and another as party boss of the southern region of Guangxi.

Hu is likely to promote more allies to key posts in an effort to further consolidate power ahead of the 17th Party Congress next year when a far-reaching leadership reshuffle is expected to ease Jiang's men out of their posts.

REUTERS