Jottings from the Granite Studio

Decent profile of Hu Jintao by Financial Times Beijing bureau chief Richard McGregor. I confess that I really don’t know all that much about Hu’s early life and career other than the c.v. type stuff and now I know it wasn’t just my own laziness. Reading the article, I was struck by the extent to which the CCP tries to obscure even the most banal details of Hu’s early life:

Every effort has been made to shut doors on Hu’s life. Ma’s book was more hagiography than biography, but she was rebuked for writing it. Hu’s university contemporary Wan, who founded one of China’s first computer companies, Stone, speaks freely only from exile in the US, where he has lived since the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989. And while the few foreign reporters who have managed to speak to Hu’s aunt, Liu Bingxia – who raised him from the age of five in the city of Taizhou, Jiangsu province, after his father died – returned with a consistent image of a diligent and uncomplaining boy, even these insights were too much for the authorities. Local officials have since prevented visitors from talking to her. That may be because of her age (she is now in her nineties), but is more likely to stop information getting out. Officials even took the precaution of visiting her house when Hu’s political star began to rise, to confiscate family pictures of him as a young man.

In the latest issue of Time, Simon Elegant also puts together a good portrait of Hu, “The Man to See.“

Both worth checking out as we get ready for good old Zhongnanhai-ology during this month’s party congress. (cf. Kerry Brown’s post on Friday for openDemocracy.net.)