Xi did not make it

In an article in the China Brief of the Jamestown Foundation, Willy Lam reports that Xi Jinping, the Chinese Vice-President did not make it to the all-powerful Central Military Commission.
Why? Nobody knows.
In April 1989, Gorbachev preached glasnost (transparency) on the Tienanmen square, but twenty years later, it seems that 'transparency' has not permeated as yet the opaque leadership of the CCP who is busy with the preparations of the 60th anniversary of the Republic's foundation.
Jinping is the son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the senior-most leaders of the First Generation of the CCP. He was very close to the late Panchen Lama and wrote a report for the Party on the famous 70,000 character petition from the Panchen Lama to Premier Zhou Enlai.
In 1962, like many other leaders , Xi Zhongxun fell out of favour; he was accused of disloyalty to Chairman Mao. Was he not tough enough with the Tibetan people? Who knows?
Xi was however rehabilitated in the 1980's; he later participated to the setting up of one of the first Special Economic Zones in Southern China.
Is his father's past catching up with Young Xi?



CCP 17th Central Committee Plenum Skips Xi Jinping and Inner-Party Democracy
China Brief Volume: 9 Issue: 19, September 24, 2009
Willy Lam

The biggest piece of news to have come out of the Fourth Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 17th Central Committee is what that did not happen: the induction of Vice-President Xi Jinping into the policy-setting Central Military Commission (CMC). This is despite widespread reports by several domestic and foreign media that Xi, who is also a Politburo Standing Committee (SPC) member and President of the Central Party School, would be made a CMC vice-chairman in order to buttress his position as heir apparent to President and CMC Chairman Hu Jintao (The Associated Press, September 16; Ming Pao [Hong Kong], September 19; Straits Times [Singapore], September 11). More importantly, however, the Xi episode has thrown into sharp relief a major concern of the Central Committee plenum: the expansion of “intra-party democracy” and reform of the cadre system so as to raise the “governance ability” of party-and-government officials.