Hu Jintao
Hu Jintao led China from 2002 to 2012, a decade of very rapid growth, rising inequality and tightening control, conducted with almost no public personality. Born in 1942 and raised in Taizhou by relatives after his mother died, he was the son of a tea merchant whose family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. He studied hydraulic engineering at Tsinghua and worked on a dam project in Gansu. He rose through the Communist Youth League and became party secretary of Guizhou and then of Tibet in 1988. In March 1989 he imposed martial law in Lhasa after protests, appearing in a helmet — the act that established his reliability with the leadership. Deng Xiaoping designated him as Jiang Zemin's successor while he was still in his forties. He was made a Politburo Standing Committee member in 1992 and vice-president in 1998, and took over as general secretary in 2002. His stated programme was the scientific outlook on development and a harmonious society, meaning growth that reached the interior and the countryside. Agricultural taxes were abolished in 2006, rural health insurance and pensions were extended to hundreds of millions, and railways, highways and cities were built at extraordinary speed. China passed Japan to become the second-largest economy in 2010, and the four-trillion-yuan stimulus of 2008 helped hold up global demand after the financial crisis. He hosted the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Unrest in Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in 2009 was suppressed, censorship expanded, and corruption grew. He handed all three posts to Xi Jinping cleanly. He was led from the 2022 party congress in front of the cameras, apparently unwillingly.
- Lived: 1942 CE – ?
- Nationality: Chinese
- Roles: General Secretary of the CCP (2002-2012), President of China (2003-2013)
