Well, it’s not live, it’s rebroadcast on CCTV 1’s Network News:
I’m watching now on CCTV 1 news (via Heilongjiang TV- remember, the CCTV 1 Network News broadcast is broadcast on a wide variety of provincial and local channels, many of which are available nationwide) Hu Jintao’s introduction of the new CCP Politburo Standing Committee (or whatever it’s called). I don’t have the patience and concentration to listen to every detail of Comrade Hu’s speech, and apparently neither does lzh, but so far I’m impressed.
I’m impressed with Comrade Hu’s public speaking skills. He’s slow, but confident, and clear and engaged with his audience. Well, as engaged as it is possible to be under the circumstances. And although some of the Politburo Standing Committee members look a bit wooden, even robotic, Wen Jiabao looked totally human and intelligent and even more engaged than Comrade Hu.
Anyway, now CCTV 1 is on to individual introductions of the Politburo Standing Committee members, apparently working their way down through the ranks. Yes, I suppose you could call it hagiography, but the presented a damn good portrait of Hu Jintao, and not a bad portrait of Wu Bangguo. Up to Wen Jiabao now. Thing with Comrade Wen is he always looks like he’s meeting people totally on their level, no pretence, no bullshit, total respect. On to Jia Qinglin: He looked a bit wooden in Comrade Hu’s press conference introduction, but he looks like he can press the flesh as well as any politician. On to Li Changchun: the consummate Dongbeiren, and an engineer, to boot. Xi Jinping: A humanities graduate of Tsinghua. Li Keqiang: Economist, of BeiDa, from Anhui. Certainly seems to be following Hu and Wen in their pressing the flesh ability. He Guoqiang: Doesn’t impress me like the others, seems a bit pale and distant. I imagine this is the way I appear to my students. Zhou Yongkang: Petroleum Institute? Neither of us heard that clearly. But oil and gas seem to be in his professional background. And his face looks like it.
Anyway, it’s getting a bit much for me to keep up with now that they’ve moved on to regular Politburo members. There’s a hell of a lot of them surnamed Wang, for starters, and that’s getting me confused.
And it’s surprising how often the word “Shanghai” comes up.
Well, of course, the coverage is very formulaic. But I have to say that I’m very impressed with the introductions of the Standing Committee members. Comrades Hu and Wen in particular looked very good, both in the press conference introductions, and in CCTV’s extended introductions. Wu Bangguo was not far behind.
Anyway, too much for me to keep up with right now, I guess we’ll have to wait till tomorrow when the more politically-minded blogs chime in with their analyses.
