Hu done it

摘要

Laws are like sausages, Bis-marck once said: the less you know about how they are made, the better. The old Prussian would surely have approved of communist China, where the making of laws, like the forming of governments, is a procedure veiled in obscurity. The past week, though, has seen the production of a more than usually mysterious sausage. On September 19th, without the faintest hint of a warning, Hu Jintao, China's president and the general secretary of its Communist Party, acquired the third and final of the country's most powerful offices, taking over as head of the party's military commission-in effect, as commander-in-chief of the army. His predecessor, Jiang Zemin, had refused to surrender this last, and arguably most potent, of titles when the transition to Mr Hu began in 2002. Ever since, there have been rumours of discord-full-blown power struggles, in the view of some; mere factional differences, say others. But now Mr Hu is apparently in sole charge, and the era of Jiang Zemin is over.