Jiang Zemin has made an appearance seated next to Xi Jinping at a concert. It is extremely rare for him to come out. He is supposed to be retired since 2004, but he still clearly not. Sitting to the other side of him was Zhang Dejiang, head of the National People's Congress with jurisdiction over the Hong Kong issue. Other members of the hardline Jiang faction were around, including Li Peng (who declared martial law as Premier in 1989) and Zeng Qinghong, a close Jiang ally and Politburo Standing Committee member during the Hu administration. Who was absent? Hu Jintao himself, as well as Wen Jiabao, plus reformist-leaning former Premier Zhu Rongji.
Meanwhile, the People's Daily published an opinion piece stating that, "In today's China, engaging in an election system of one-man-one-vote is bound to quickly lead to turmoil, unrest and even a situation of civil war." Which normally would not be much, except its author is the head of the Internal Affairs committee of the NPC, Li Shenming. And who is this Li Shenming? He 2011 he argued "for the continued relevance of the 'Stalinist model,' and sa[id] that the critical reason for the collapse of both the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet Union was not the failure of Marxism or socialism, but the betrayal of these values and systems by Khrushchev and Gorbachev."
Interesting that Jiang has made an appearance with XI, considering a bunch of Jiang allies have been purged.
