Hu Chunhua
Seen as an ally of Hu Jintao, "Little Hu," as he's known in China (he's unrelated to Hu Jintao) is party secretary of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a massive, coal-rich area in the country's north. If the 49-year-old Hu does ascend to the Standing Committee, he will be the youngest member and possibly the core of the sixth generation of Chinese Communist Party leaders, a strong contender to replace Xi Jinping as party secretary in 2022. (Hu Jintao was also 49, and the youngest member, when appointed to the Standing Committee in 1992.) Like Hu Jintao, who served as party secretary of Tibet and Guizhou, Hu Chunhua has extensive experience dealing with Chinese minorities, an important qualification given the instability of areas like Tibet and Xinjiang. He spent 23 years in the Tibetan provincial government, and reportedly speaks fluent Tibetan, rare for a Chinese official. For now, Little Hu would likely be one of the lower-ranking members, like Hu Jintao in 1992 (7th) and Xi Jinping in 2007 (6th).
Liu Yandong
Currently the only woman in the 25-member Politburo, the decision-making body a rung down from the Standing Committee, Liu is state councilor, an assistant to China's premier and vice-premiers. She's seen as a protégé of both Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. She graduated from Hu's alma matter Tsinghua University, and served as his deputy in the Communist Youth League, an organization that Hu ran and is seen as his power base. Liu is a princeling; her father was formerly a vice minister of agriculture and introduced Jiang Zemin's adopted father to the Communist Party in 1927. She would be the first woman in Chinese Communist Party history to make it to the Standing Committee, though Liu, at 66, might be too old. The Politburo has an unofficial retirement age of 68, and Liu's chances could be hurt "if the leadership decides to make this supreme decision-making body younger," writes Li.
Yu Zhengsheng
Shanghai Party Secretary Yu's career has had the most public vicissitudes of any current Chinese leader. In 1985, Yu's brother, the former director of the Beijing National Security Bureau, defected to the United States. Yu, a princeling who reportedly had close ties to the family of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, managed to salvage his career and spent six years as the party secretary of Hubei province before being appointed to his current position in 2007. But everyone else on this list might have similar skeletons in their closet; the code of silence surrounding the Chinese Communist Party means it's unlikely that that information will ever be made public.
SUBJECTS:
