Ex-Chinese leader ‘purged’ on stage
LOOKING frail and downcast, this is the dramatic moment the former president of China was abruptly escorted off stage by two officials yesterday.
Hu Jintao, 79, was led away during the closing ceremony of the Chinese Communist Party Congress in Beijing, which was being broadcast live. Images of the scene were at once censored from China’s TV and social media. State media later said Mr Hu was ‘not feeling well’.
Mr Hu, who was president from 2003 to 2013, was sitting next to current leader Xi Jinping when two masked officials appeared to ask him to leave. At first Mr Hu seemed to refuse and one official tried to lift him off his seat. After exchanging a few words, he was led away.
Last night, Roger Garside, a former British diplomat in Beijing, said: ‘This is a political act by Xi Jinping. It is Xi humiliating his predecessor in public with this purge.’
Raffaello Pantucci of think tank the Royal United Services Institute, disagreed, saying: ‘I don’t think this was a purge. In China they venerate their elders, so to have purged your predecessor like that would antagonise the Chinese people.
‘But Xi Jinping is purging his party of opponents, and the party is becoming increasingly about him.’