Huang Ju

Encyclopedia : H : HU : HUA : Huang Ju

Huang Ju (黄菊, Pinyin: Huáng Jú) (born September 1939) is the Executive Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China. He is ranked 6th out of 9 in the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China. With very close relations with his patron Jiang Zemin, he is considered a member of the "Shanghai clique".

Born in Jiashan, Zhejiang Province, Huang graduated in electrical engineering from Qinghua University. In 1987, Huang became one of the chosen candidates for the Mayor of Shanghai, and therefore a CCP Central Committee member, but he was embarrassed by the low number of votes supporting his candidacy, followed by Zhu Rongji's installment as Mayor of Shanghai. When Zhou became Premier, Huang became mayor of Shanghai in 1991 and then city's Party chief in 1994, which he served until October 2002. In Shanghai he is known to have achieved fairly little, and served in a role to keep the city's party organization in line. He was criticized by political rivals in February 1995, when his daughter, Huang Fan (黄凡), married Fang Yiwei (方以伟), the son of Fang Dachuan (方大川), a pro-Taiwan newspaperman in San Francisco.

Huang is widely believed to be in connection with the Shanghai real estate scandals involving Zhou Zhengyi, one of Shanghai's big-name business elites. Huang did little to stop monopolies in Shanghai's booming real estate business, resulting in residents being forced out of their homes to make way for new construction. Zhou Zhengyi was eventually charged with multiple counts of fraud, but was only sentenced to three years in prison. Analysts speculated this is largely because of Huang's involvement with the municipal courts.

With Jiang Zemin's departure in 2002, Huang became one of the patronage appointments from Jiang's Shanghai clique to China's top making decision body, the Politburo Standing Committee. He is the leader that received the least votes in favour, with over 300 against in his confirmation for the CCP Politburo. Huang is widely regarded as being unremarkable as a leader and lacking an impressive track record, owing his rise to power solely to Jiang Zemin and various political schemes. He is the least popular of the 9 politburo members, and does not have many policies attributed to his name. His position as Executive Vice-Premier is considered largely figurative and has very little power, especially when compared to previous Executive Vice-Premiers Yao Yilin and Li Lanqing. His official portfolios are to oversee finance and banking.

In February 2006, Huang was reportedly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer by South China Morning Post, and is expected to step down, which would strengthen Hu Jintao's position, as Huang has a very strong relationship with Jiang Zemin. However, official sources, who first refused to comment on Huang's mysterious disappearance from public affairs, later chose to comment that Huang was recovering, inadvertently proving his ill condition. No reports can be confirmed, and state media had no mention of Huang since his last January appearance. He was absent from the 2006 NPC session. On 17 March, reports said he was near death. Still, there are sources attributing his sudden disappearance from the public to a result of internal power struggle, in which Huang Ju was actually purged to make ways for a political structure dominanted by Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao loyalties. He has since then returned to the public scene, attending a Science and Technology forum in Beijing on 5 June.

External links

Members of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.