China Hu Jintao’s CYL Faction in Serious Trouble

The open attack on officials who cut their teeth in the Communist Youth League comes as power struggles and political jockeying intensify in the run-up to next year’s 19th party congress. Photo: AP

SCMP says in its report “Strike Two: Communist Youth League ‘aristocracy’ under fire again” that cadres with youth league (CYL) backgrounds are warmed that “they would face ‘tough weather’after several scandals compounded the leadership’s resentment over their ‘self-serving’ attitude”.

CYL, is former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Jintao’s powerbase. When Hu was in power, he promoted lots of his CYL protégés to high official positions. As a result a powerful CYL faction emerged and is second only to Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai faction.

SCMP’s report is based on a microblog posted on Capitalnews, a WeChat account operated by Beijing Daily, the official newspaper of the party’s Beijing municipal committee.

Such a microblog on the Internet seems insignificant, but we should recall that it was the article by Deng Yuwen on Hu Jintao’s legacy of ten problems on August 30, 2012 that brought about tremendous consequence on the eve of the 18th CCP National Congress.

At that time Deng Yuwen was the deputy chief editor of Study Times, a magazine of CCP Party School controlled by Hu Jintao’s designated successor Xi Jinping. Soon after the article was published, Xi Jinping mysteriously disappeared for almost half a month in early September.

Before Xi’s mystic disappearance, the CCP could not determine the date of its 18th Congress as there is no consensus on the formation of its Politburo, especially the PSC.

Deng’s article on the Internet seemed insignificant when Chinese official media was filled with articles and reports on Hu Jintao’s achievements, but it gave Xi the ammunition when he visited the powerful elders during his mystic disappearance to win over their support for his fight against corruption and other malpractices.

As a result, soon after Xi reemerged from his mystic disappearance, Jiang Zemin came to Beijing to preside over a Politburo meeting to determine the date of the 18th Congress and severe punishment of Bo Xilai that Hu Jintao lacked power to determine.

Due to the problems listed in Deng’s article, Hu’s CYL faction lost in the fight for control of the PSC. Jiang’s Shanghai faction had all the new PSC members. However, as a compromise, all Jiang’s members were old and had to retire in the 19th Congress and Hu’s faction had 8 Politburo members who were quite talented and might well be chosen as PSC member in the 19th Congress.

However, the arrangement of having 5 PSC members to retire at the next Congress also meant that Jiang wanted Xi to succeed him as the core of CCP leadership and choose the new PSC members to succeed those chosen by him.

It seems that Xi does not want to choose members of CYL faction as PSC members and like Deng’s article on the Internet in 2012, the current microblog by Beijing Daily will play a role similar to Deng’s article.

As for what happened during and after Xi’s mysterious disappearance, it is a very long story described in full in the expanded 2nd edition of my book Tiananmen’s Tremendous Achievements.

Comment by Chan Kai Yee on SCMP’s report.

Full text of SCMP’s report can be viewed at http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/1911332/strike-two-communist-youth-league-aristocracy-under

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