The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

order PAP reinforcement to Xinjiang personally, upon
listening to the situation report.
Generally speaking, Hu’s power consolidation
strategy has the following features. Firstly, he maintained
unity in the Politburo where Jiang’s appointees
made the majority. To counter a lopsided equilibrium
in their personnel line-up, Hu made a number of
smart moves. He has allied with Wen on the basis of
policy. Therefore, his support to Wen’s economic policy
was reciprocated by Wen’s support to Hu’s idea
of social harmony and scientific development. This
helps prevent the emergence of major policy disagreement,
which is the most fatal threat to a new leader
in the process of power consolidation. 46 At the same
time, Hu has managed a delicate equilibrium between
Jiang’s nominees and other Politburo members. Hu
cooperated well with Zeng Qinghong over personnel
matters and supported non-Jiang appointees in their
daily work. Therefore, Hu has been seen as posing no
threat by most of Hu’s Politburo colleagues. The result
is that no major factional strife has happened since Hu
became the Party boss. 47 This fundamentally removed
the source of military intervention in Party factional
politics.
Second, Hu has chosen consolidation of his Party
position as the precondition for controlling the gun,
not the other way around. Deng and Jiang proved that
with dominant authority in the Party, it is highly unlikely
they would be challenged by the PLA. However,
in building these two mutually supporting mechanisms
of control, Hu’s sequence is unusual. All of
Hu’s predecessors used the PLA to command civilian
politics. Hu is probably the first leader in CCP history
to reverse this practice. Certainly what Hu has done
was not his choice. The arranged succession denied
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