Biography
After attending school in Taizhou, Hu began studying engineering at Beijing Technical University in 1959. He specialized in hydraulic engineering projects and completed his studies as a water management engineer in 1965. Hu then worked as a research assistant at his university until 1968. Since he had joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1964 while still studying, he was now also employed as a political lecturer. From 1968 to 1974, Hu supervised corresponding projects in the northwestern province of Gansu on behalf of the Ministry of Hydraulic Engineering and Electricity.
In 1974/75 he worked as secretary of the commission for investment construction in that province, then until 1980 as deputy head of planning and administration of the said commission. Then from 1980 to 1982, Hu became deputy chairman of the Investment Construction Commission in Gansu Province. After a training course at the Communist Party School in Beijing, the XII. CCP Party Congress Hu in September 1982 as Central Committee candidate. Towards the end of 1982, Hu joined the Central Committee (CC) of the CPC, where he also became a member of its Standing Committee. As a result, he initially worked as chairman of the Communist Youth Association (KJV). In this role, he advocated Deng Xiaoping's reform policies, which were rebelliously defended by the "Beijing Youth Newspaper" under his command.
In mid-1985, Hu was given leadership of the party in the southern Chinese province of Guizhou. In October 1988 he was sent to Tibet as Communist Party leader, where unrest soon developed in Lhasa due to Tibet's aspirations for autonomy: the Beijing leadership ordered the imposition of martial law in the region, which killed around 70 people. Regardless of the party secretary's political complicity in these human rights violations, Hu was also instrumental in stabilizing the political situation in Tibet and promoting the economic development of the impoverished and backward region, whereby his practical experience as a hydraulic engineer benefited him. In October 1992, the XIVth CPC Party Congress confirmed Hu as a Central Committee member.
He was also elected to the Politburo, its Standing Committee and the Secretariat of the Central Committee. The following year, the youngest Chinese politician was given the vice chairmanship of the Central Committee's organizing committee and the leadership of the Central Committee's party school. The new director of the party school had studies carried out on the communist and social democratic party history of Europe, which he hoped would provide a way out of the ideological crisis of communism. One of the options identified was to open up the huge empire to private-sector capitalist initiatives, which was pushed forward by President and Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin in the 1990s without any political liberalization.
A trip around the world in 1997 gave Hu the opportunity to, among other things, also present himself to Western diplomacy as a future representative of the Chinese leadership. In March 1998, the Chinese parliament appointed Hu as deputy to President and Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin. In the wake of the resignation of Zemin and other high party officials, the XVI. CCP Party Congress on November 15, 2002 Hu as its new general secretary. On March 15, 2003, the People's Congress elevated the party leader to the position of President, giving Hu the two most powerful positions in the People's Republic of China. The new party leader is seen as a pioneer of a new China, which, in the wake of economic opening, still faces severe democratic deficits at home and the problems of globalization from outside.
In the area of foreign policy, under his leadership the PRC took a clearly negative position against the Iraq war triggered by US and British troops in March 2003. In the spring of 2005, the Chinese government appeared to tolerate violent student and youth protests in their country that were directed against Japan's stance in the Second World War and the current deficits in Japan's coming to terms with the past. At the end of April, Hu Jintao met at a historic meeting in Beijing with the head of the Taiwan Nationalist Party Kuomintang, Lien Chan, which is currently in opposition in the island nation. In September 2005, the Chinese head of state made a state visit to the USA.
In the same month he took part in the UN anniversary summit in New York, which celebrated the 60th anniversary of the world organization. In October 2005, at the Communist Party Congress in Beijing, Jintao addressed for the first time the need for a more "harmonious" course of Chinese economic development, through which the increasing social differences in Chinese society can be addressed society should be balanced. At the end of October, a spectacular summit meeting took place between the North Korean head of government and China's President Jintao: In Pyongyang, both tried to initiate a policy of détente. For the first time in ten years, a Chinese president, Hu Jintao, visited neighboring India at the end of 2006.
Hu Jintao is married and has two children.
