On April 3 Party chief Hu Jintao attended a tree-planting ceremony with eight of his colleagues from the Politburo Standing Committee; the first time they had all been seen together in public since the ouster on March 15 of Bo Xilai, controversial former Party chief of Chongqing. But the relative placidity of the event masked the power struggles, declarations of allegiance, and shoring up of political support that were taking place around it.
Newspaper editorials and public statements by officials have become occasions for them and factions to declare—or quietly fail to declare—their loyalty to Hu Jintao and the current leadership. Analysts say that such political theater has been seen before in China, but only around times of major turbulence in the communist power structure.
