CHINA: Communist Party unveils leadership line
Updated
China's Communist Party has unveiled the leadership line-up that will steer the country for the next five years. President Hu Jintao has won a second term as party and army chief. The four new members of Chinese cabinet include only one obvious supporter of President Hu. That's left observers wondering if he'll be able to alter China's economic policy in any drastic way.
Presenter: China correspondent, Stephen McDonell
Speakers: Chinese President Hu Jintao; China Analyst Russell Moses
MCDONELL: After months of behind the scenes negotiating and one week of solid number crunching, China's new leadership group emerged today for the first time.
The hundreds of journalists who gathered in the Great Hall of the People had a quick look at the nine faces who walked out on the red carpet and started doing the sums.
Had President Hu Jintao promoted enough supporters to the cabinet to seize control in his own right. Well, in a word, no.
But the Chinese leader showed no signs of somebody who failed to break free from the shackles of his predecessor.
JINTAO (translated) "Ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends, good morning" he said and the President continued "the congress was a resounding success".
MCDONELL: But was it such a resounding success for President Hu. There were four new appointments to the Politburo Standing Committee. Only one, Li Keqiang, is clearly a Hu supporter. Xi Jinping is seen as aligned to former President Jiang Zemin. Two others He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang are thought to have links to former vice-president Zeng Qinghong.
So President was well short of seizing the nine person Politburo Standing Committee.
Beijing based China analyst Russell Moses thinks there could be tough times ahead for President Hu.
MOSES: I think what you've seen is a result of some more political conflict up the top. I mean, there's a sense I think overseas that Hu Jintao is consolidated power here. Nothing of the kind has in fact happened.
What we're going to see is more infighting, more struggle and more problems for the future.
Since Mao died there's been a consensus that there should be a collective group of people running the country. Hu Jintao is at the top of that collective group but what it's going to mean is that even though he's won much of the political struggle right now, he still has a policy problem and that is that people disagree about the direction that China, is in fact, heading.
There are people, I think, within his group and he's trying to get diverse interests involved in this but with those diverse interests, also come people with different views about how exactly to solve problems.
I think the conflict is between doing a lot and not doing very much at all. I think Hu Jintao's view is that the course right now is steady, its strong and there should be no departure from it but I think there are many people who are beginning to think that indeed there should be some sort of a shift. A shift indeed to start taking care of environmental problems in terms of the overuse of economic resources and the income inequality.
I think there is agreement on a lot of the problems. There is disagreement about how to solve them.
MCDONELL: Amongst todays appointments, Shanghai's Xi Jinping and Liao-ning's Li Keqiang are seen as the front runners to take over from Hu Jintao as the next ruler of China.
President Hu will remain in charge for the next five years but any changes to policy especially economic policy will have to be moderated in line with the wishes of the parties main factions.
In one way, it will be business as usual for the Chinese leader but it is well short of the power shifting coup he was at one stage predicted as being able to pull off at this congress.
