Hu Jintao's Meetings Monitored by CCP: Cheney's Memoir

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney recently released his memoir “In My Time.” Besides discussing U.S. government matters, the book offers some insight into a kind of surveillance that current Chinese leader Hu Jintao has been under within the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP.

In the book, Cheney complains of Hu’s scripted answers. He describes an attempted private meeting between himself and Hu in 2002. At that time Hu was still the appointed vice president. Cheney says the meeting was interrupted by the then Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxiang. Li was a senior party member and close to Hu’s boss, the leader of the CCP at the time, Jiang Zemin.

Cheney writes:
“He had blown past my staff as they tried to explain politely that this was a one-on-one meeting, and now he seated himself between Hu and me. It was clear this was the minder reporting back to Beijing. Hu didn’t skip a beat and continued to deliver the scripted answers he had been giving in other meetings.”

Editor of Hong Kong’s Trend magazine, Zhang Weiguo says Cheney accurately portrays both Hu’s situation and Li Zhaoxiang’s character.

[Zhang Weiguo, Editor, Trend Magazine (Hong Kong)]:
“These details and evidence from Cheney portrays, in a remarkably true to life way, how although Hu Jintao was a high level CCP official, he was actually just a political tool of the Party. Another aspect is, it’s also evidence of the domineering character of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Li Zhaoxiang. Not only was he in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but he had also gotten deeply involved with the highest level of authority within the CCP, and was playing a major role there.”

Cheney goes on to describe another meeting he had with Hu later in 2004, after Hu had become the leader of the CCP. Although the supposedly ‘private’ meeting was not interrupted, Cheney’s staff told him afterwards that the meeting had been broadcast into an adjacent room where Hu’s staff were listening in.

Cheney concluded: “The Chinese, apparently, aren’t fans of one-on-one meetings.”

Chinese democracy activist Wei Jingsheng says that this resistance to one-on-one meetings shows how the CCP operates.

[Wei Jingsheng, Chinese Democracy Activist]:
“When the [Chinese Communist] Party deals with other countries, it would be impossible to establish private relations with a Chinese leader. Some conversations are limited to two states or two political parties. It isn’t that they don’t like (one on one relations) but it's their usual practice. Their type of single party government doesn’t allow it. Your individual personality doesn’t exist, you are completely a tool of the party and the state.”

Although Hu Jintao will soon step down as the Chinese Communist Party leader, a future memoir describing his meetings with Cheney may still have to follow the party line.