- guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 17 2002 02.14 GMT
Top-right was a large picture of the new party boss Hu Jintao next to his mentor, President Jiang Zemin, who supposedly stepped down from power last week at the party's Sixteenth Congress in Beijing.
Both men featured again in separate pictures below, followed by those of the eight members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee, which was chosen on Friday.
The papers' layout conveyed the not-so-subtle message that Jiang is still very much on the scene. The old art of Pekinology - which used to guess changes in the leadership from the arrangement of newspaper pictures - has a new lease of life.
Publication of yesterday's Beijing newspapers was delayed until mid-morning, probably to ensure that the uniformity was observed. On Friday Hu had led out his new team before the world press, introducing them in the order of precedence followed so scrupulously with the pictures.
With dark suits and red ties, each stood on his allotted floor stud in the Great Hall of the People while Hu said that China would embark on a new 'action plan... for the new century'.
The moment the meeting was over, however, the Xinhua national news agency rushed out an urgent one-line dispatch: Jiang, it said, would remain as chairman of the party's military commission. Yesterday another picture showed him addressing top military leaders and wearing an army tunic. It was a heavy hint that the former party general secretary has no intention of fading away quietly.
Jiang's 'important thinking - as Hu deferentially described it to the nation on Friday - is now the ideology for a new age. His doctrine of the Three Represents is now being listed ahead of the ideas of Marx and Lenin. It says the party should represent 'the basic interests of the vast majority of the Chinese people' - not just the working class.
Yesterday an editorial in the official People's Daily praised the 'smooth succession' from the 'third generation' of those who remember the revolution (Jiang is 76) to a new group of 'energetic leaders' (Hu is 59).
It flattered the party elders for their 'nobility of character' in stepping down, though it appears Jiang has not done so as completely as the others.
Many Chinese, used to the tradition of deferring to their elders until they die, accept that this is natural. 'Mr Hu has a good background,' said a Beijing worker, 'but he still needs Jiang to back him up.'
They approve too of Jiang's emphasis on the need to deliver the material goods to the Chinese people, although some worry that this seems to favour the rich. In a significant revision of traditional doctrine Jiang has opened the door to private entrepreneurs joining the party.
'We say everyone should be rewarded according to their work,' explains one senior journalist. 'It does not matter now whether the work is manual or mental, or whether it is the result of investing one's capital.'
Not everyone agrees with the virtual reintroduction of capitalism. 'If we deny that exploitation of others still exists,' one critic complained on a popular website yesterday, 'we are blindfolding ourselves while we walk on a mountain path'.
Jiang is expected to hand over his concurrent position as President to Hu at the next meeting of the National People's Congress, the country's parliament, in March.
China experts are divided on how long he will be able to maintain effective power by remaining as head of the military commission. If his influence fades in the next two years, it will be a sign that Chinese politics really is changing.
Jiang threatened to stay on as party boss as recently as last July - a manoeuvre which forced his rivals in the leadership to resign - and he clearly believes that the nation still needs him.
Whatever worries other Chinese may have about the party and particularly its failure to root out corruption, 103-year-old Zhang Chuntai in the north-eastern city of Shenyang has no doubts. He has just applied to join the party, says the People's Daily, because it has created a 'decent life' for China.
When it turns cold, he says, the city leaders visit his house to see whether the central heating is working properly.
Jiang would be proud of Zhang, for whom age is also no obstacle.
