In a dramatic development in the closing ceremony of the 20th Communist party Congress (CPC), which is set to elect Xi Jinping for a third consecutive five-year term as the party general secretary on October 23 – his predecessor, Hu Jintao, 79, was asked to leave from the great hall in Beijing of the people in the presence of 2,296 Congress delegates.
Significantly, Jintao sitting in the front row beside the current and former leaders on stage was escorted out of the meeting venue without any explanation offered.
China’s former president was asked to leave after half of the meeting proceedings were completed. According to the visuals available, he was seen having a conversation with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang before the stewards at the venue quietly spoke with him and holding his hand escorted him out of the main venue.
Who is Hu Jintao?
Elected as the president of China on March 15, 2003, he retired in 2013. Some of the major achievements under his leadership include anchoring China through the economic crisis, launching the country’s maiden manned space probe and hosting the 2008 Olympics.
Jintao began working at the grassroots level in 1968 in west China’s Gansu Province. He continued working in the region until 1982 when he became a member of the Secretariat of the Communist Youth League of China Central Committee and president of the All-China Youth Federation.
In 1985, the former president was appointed successively, secretary of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee and of the CPC Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee. The 49-year-old Hu was appointed as the elected member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at the First Plenum of the 14th CPC Central Committee. This elevation was then widely considered an important move the CPC had taken toward a generational transition of the party’s core leadership.
Subsequently Hu was the president of the party school of the central committee from 1993 to the end of 2002. Significantly, the school is considered to be the training place for the CPC party cadres and an important pillar for theoretical studies for the past 70 years.
Hu and his wife Liu Yongqing studied together at Qinghua University. They have a son and a daughter, who are also graduates of Qinghua University.