- Fan Wang
- BBC News, Singapore
image source, C.N.A
Cameras captured the moments before Hu Jintao left the CCP Congress.
A new recording reveals more details about what happened moments before China’s former president Hu Jintao was ostentatiously removed from a Chinese Communist Party congress session in Beijing last week.
The scene shows outgoing Politburo member Li Zhanshu sitting to Hu’s left, taking a document from him and telling him something.
Later, China’s current president, Xi Jinping, gives lengthy instructions to another man who then tries to persuade Hu to step down.
The unexpected moment sparked intense speculation: some argued that it was a deliberate power play by Xi to show that Hu’s era of consensus was finally over; Others suggested that Hu’s poor health was the reason for the former president’s dismissal.
Many questioned whether this was a planned political drama.
Official news agency Xinhua Hu was later taken out on Twitter because he was ill, but the announcement was not made locally because the site was banned for users in China.
The incident came a day before Xi announced his third term in office and a delegation of key officials to accompany him.
Unlike Hu’s presidency (2003-2013), seen as a moment of Chinese openness to the outside world, Xi presided over an increasingly isolated country.
New pictures
The New footage captured by Channel News AsiaBased in Singapore, Hu did not discredit the official version that he was ill, but the way the former president handled the document in front of him played a role in the incident.
To add intrigue, Li Zhanshu appeared to get up to help Hu, but Wang Huning pulled him back to his seat.
Hu said something to the emotionless Ji as he was led away, and none of the other men sitting in line looked back as he was led out.
Deng Yuen, former editor of the Communist Party Journal. Study timeHu says there is no reason for the party to keep a document in front of it that it should not read, especially when the cameras are rolling during such a high-level meeting.
“Obviously, it’s an unusual situation,” he says. “Until we have more information about the contents of the document or what it says, no one can explain what happened.”
image source, C.N.A
Wen-Ti Chung, a professor at the Australian National University, says the new images are endless.
“In China, everything is about order, especially at high-profile events like this, and especially in the Xi era, everything is about control,” he says.
“So a hoo is getting out of control and this sudden — admittedly strange — withdrawal justifies a lot of rumours. But Rumors or speculations about the purge are not necessarily true.“.
But Deng says the fact that other top party officials, including Hu’s former second-in-command Wen Jiabao, looked straight ahead as Hu walked with a companion behind them says something about Xi’s China.
If indeed the drama was spontaneous and motivated by concern for Hu’s welfare, Xi’s appointments the next day highlighted the hallmark of the former leader’s hasty exit: Hu Jintao is not going to return to the principles of the era.
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