Birth of bitterness
When President Hu Jintao came to Shanghai last month, he visited a city power station, a shipyard and a car factory - but not his home town of Taizhou, in Jiangsu province, which is 240km away.
Most Chinese leaders, like ordinary people, set great store by their birth place. For example, the local government has restored places associated with Mao Zedong in Shaoshan, Hunan province, and officials in Guangan county, Sichuan province, have done the same for their famous son, Deng Xiaoping. The government of Taizhou city is preserving the memory of Mr Hu, but he has not been there for more than 20 years and, apparently, has no intention of going.
According to official biographies, Mr Hu does not come from Taizhou at all, but from Jixi in Anhui province. In fact, he was born in Taizhou in 1942 to a family of tea merchants. One of his grandfathers was born in Anhui.
Apparently, his birthplace was changed because Taizhou is a short distance from Yangzhou, the birthplace of Jiang Zemin, and the party decided that it was unseemly to have successive leaders from the same area.
After the communists took power, they confiscated the Hu family's tea business. Fortunately, however, the party designated the family 'small capitalists', a class with whom it could co-operate and which could redeem itself through labour and re-education. Despite a less-than-ideal background, Mr Hu was a model student who won a place at the best secondary school in the city and then at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of the best in China, which has produced many of post-1949 leaders.
So why is Taizhou conspicuously missing from his biography? There are two theories. One is that Mr Hu wants to avoid any idea of a 'Jiangsu faction'; that he represents the interests of a province that is one of the richest in China rather than the whole country. The other, more plausible, is bitterness over the treatment of his father, Hu Jingzhi, who suffered terribly during the Cultural Revolution. He was accused of stealing public money and forced to attend public denunciation and struggle sessions. His health deteriorated rapidly and he died in 1978, aged 50.
According to one story, Mr Hu returned to Taizhou after his father's death and tried to persuade local officials to rehabilitate his father, as had been done for millions of other victims of the Cultural Revolution. But they refused and he left, a bitter and angry man, vowing never to return. It is hard to believe that, after he became head of the party, Mr Hu could not arrange the correction of this injustice. But, for now, we do not know - and Mr Hu refuses to visit his home town.
