The prospect of Communist China being ruled by a leader with links to the Tiananmen Square uprising is looming as the party decides next week who will form the new generation of Beijing’s elite.
Two men, both lawyers and career apparatchiks, are tipped to emerge as new members of the ruling politburo during the five-yearly Party Congress, setting one up to be groomed as replacement for President Hu Jintao in 2012.
One of the two, Li Keqiang, 52, mixed in his student days with future leaders of the Tiananmen Square protest movement, and in 1989 was a senior official in the Communist Youth League, which defended the demonstrators as “patriots”.
The other, Xi Jinping, 54, was a local official in southern China at the time. But his father, a former vice-premier, backed a party leader who was sacked for pursuing liberal reforms and whose death triggered the protests. [Full Text]
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