October 23, 2007	Tuesday	Shawwal 10, 1428

BEIJING: Two younger officials emerged on Monday as front-runners to become China’s next leaders, but their fast track to the top could spark bitter communist infighting, analysts say.

Chinese President Hu Jintao named Xi Jinping, 54, and Li Keqiang, 52, to the powerful nine-member Politburo Standing Committee a day after the ruling party ended its five-yearly Congress.

Xi, known as a “princeling” due to his father’s communist revolutionary credentials, emerged as the favourite to succeed Hu when he steps down as the party’s top leader in 2012, the analysts said.

Li, regarded as an ally of Hu, is now considered as most likely to take over from Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

Analysts said one signal that Xi was being groomed for the most powerful position of president was because he was listed as the fifth-ranking member of committee, one ahead of Li.

But, in the secretive world of Chinese politics, they cautioned that nothing was certain.

“If people think that this succession is a done deal, it is far too early,” Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington, told AFP.

Xi is unpopular among ordinary people because of his privileged “princeling” past, while other officials see his rise to the top as too fast and not in line with party conventions, Cheng Li said.

Xi’s star rose when he replaced a graft-tainted official as Shanghai’s top leader earlier this year, and he has only served in that key post for seven months.

As for Li Keqiang, he failed to make a mark in Liaoning and Henan provinces where he has served as the party’s top leader over the past 10 years, but has nevertheless risen under Hu’s patronage, according to Cheng Li.

“I think it will become ugly in the next few years because the political establishment will not take these two easily,” the scholar said.

Not only will Xi and Li have to prove themselves to the political hierarchy, they will have to overcome a rivalry between their opposing factions.

Xi is regarded as a leader of the “princeling” faction that is well entrenched in China’s prosperous coastal provinces and urban centres, while Li’s loyalties lie with Hu and his Communist Youth League powerbase.

“It is clear that one grouping does not have the power to suppress the other branch as both are backed by powerful interest groups,” Michel Bonnin, a China scholar at the School of Advanced Social Sciences in Paris, told AFP.

“It is going to be interesting to observe the eventual rivalry between these two groups, notably the rivalry between Xi and Li.”

On top of the inter-party factionalism, both men will have to stamp their own credentials in some way, said Ralph Cossa, an Asia expert at the Pacific Forum in Hawaii.

“I don’t know if we will be able to say with any certainty who will replace Hu. There is still some uncertainty on this and this is good because now these (top) guys are going to have to go out and prove themselves,” Cossa said.

But for Paul Harris, a political scientist at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, the events in Beijing are nothing more than political theatre aimed at papering over a lack of democracy.

“It is a severe indictment of the system that we are still at a point where 1.3 billion people have no clue and no say on who will be leading them five years from now,” Harris said.—AFP