Hu Jintao
(b. 1942), political leader of China. Born in Shanghai in December 1942, with ancestral roots in Anhui Province, Hu Jintao graduated from China's Qinghua University, Department of Irrigation Engineering, in 1965. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in April 1964 and became a political/ideological counselor for students while in college. After graduation, he became an engineer at the Liujiaxia Irrigation Works in Gansu Province, northwestern China.
Chosen by Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) to be the yet-to-be-confirmed paramount leader of the so-called fourth generation of leadership of the People's Republic of China (PRC), Hu has ranked as the fifth and the youngest standing member of the seven-member Political Bureau of the CCP since 1997. His current posts include vice president of the PRC and vice president of the CCP's Military Affairs Committee. He has held the posts of head of the Chinese Communist Youth League (January 1983–July 1985), party secretary of Guizhou Province (July 1985–November 1988), and the eighth party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region (December 1988–January 1991).
Hu is known for his deep affiliation with the Chinese Communist Youth League, his longtime supervision of the CCP's ideological work and the training of the CCP's young ideologues, and his crackdown on the Tibetans' uprising in Lhasa, Tibet's capital. He generally evades media coverage and has granted especially little access to the international media.
Further Reading
Li Cheng. (2000) "Jiang Zemin's Successors: The Rise of the Fourth Generation of Leaders in the PRC." China Quarterly 161 (March): 1–40.
Ren Zhichu. (1997) Hu Jintao: China's First Man in the 21st Century. New York: Mirror.
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