‘Little Hu’ will be youngest member of committee if promoted

deliberations ahead of the congress. There are signs the deliberations have moved to the seaside resort of Beidaihe, a traditional summer retreat 250km from Beijing.

“This is to solicit opinions but it won’t reach any final decisions on the new collective leadership. It’s too early for that,” said a source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, due to potential repercussions for discussing elite politics.

If elevated, Hu Chunhua, 49, would be the youngest member of the standing committee and as an ally of an outgoing president would be seen as someone destined for bigger things, possibly the party leadership.

He gained some international exposure earlier this year, when he accompanied Xi on a trip to the United States, along with a smattering of other provincial leaders.

President Hu became a member of the Politburo Standing Committee in 1992 and he became China’s leader a decade later.

If Hu Chunhua does not make it, he is the front-runner to become party boss of Shanghai and a member of the party’s elite Politburo, a bigger grouping of top leaders, sources said.

Shanghai, alongside major cities Beijing, Tianjin and Chongqing, enjoy a higher political status, giving their party bosses greater clout.

The Politburo has 24 members after the ousting of Bo Xilai, the charismatic but controversial party boss of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing.

He fell from power after his police chief sought asylum at a nearby US consulate and his wife was named as a suspect in the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood. She will be tried this week.

Other candidates in the running to succeed Yu Zhengsheng as Shanghai party boss are China’s Commerce Minister Chen Deming, incumbent mayor Han Zheng, who survived a corruption scandal that ensnared his former boss, and the party’s top researcher wang huning, the sources said.

Yu is also a candidate to be promoted to the standing committee, the sources said.

Hu Chunhua could also become party boss of Beijing, replacing Guo Jinlong. Sources said Guo could lose his job after a bungled rescue response following floods in which 79 died.

After graduating from the elite Peking University, Hu Chunhua cut his teeth in the Communist Youth League – President Hu’s power base. Almost immediately, he was posted to restive Tibet.

Hu Jintao was Tibet party boss for four years until 1992 and like the president, Hu Chunhua has made a name for himself serving in difficult locations.

In total, he spent 23 years in Tibet, overlapping for some of that period with Hu Jintao.

“Little Hu” was named the Youth League’s chief in 2006.

He served as governor and eventually party boss of the northern province of Hebei before moving to Inner Mongolia in 2009. — Reuters