October 22, 2002 Chinese president [...] is not due to step down from power until March, but Chicago cabdriver Stanley Shen talks as if [he] already is out. Shen says he is not exactly impressed with his country's leader, who is in Chicago today to address the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

"I'm not supportive or against him," Shen, 51, said. "I think he has just worked for his own position. He didn't change anything, though he did work for peace with American-Chinese relations. Politics, he controlled very tight."

Politics in China, and among Chicago's roughly 33,000 Chinese from the mainland and Taiwan, is dicey and divisive, depending on who is talking and where they are from.

[The current leader] reached the top of the Chinese leadership in 1989. That year he became party general secretary and chairman of the Communist Party's military commission.

In March 1990, he was named chairman of the military commission for the people's republic.

In March 1993 he was elected president of the people's republic, and re-elected in March 1998. Under the constitution, [he] is to step down from the presidency in March 2003.

Experts say his likely successor both as president and head of the Communist Party is vice president Hu Jintao, who is currently also the party's vice president. Hu's appointment is expected at the Communist Party congress in November.

But doubt still lingers on whether [he] is ready to hand over the reins of power entirely.

"The reason people have doubts is because many believe that political power comes from the backing of the military," said Dali Yang, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

The late paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, for example, wielded clout even after leaving office in 1989, Dali said.

"Even though he stepped down, there was basically an agreement among the Chinese leadership to consult him," Dali said.

Dali isn't so sure [the current leader], who is 76 and a grandfather of two, has the same sway. [ ...]

"[He] wants the people of China to operate under the illusion that Falun Gong is some Chinese aberration," said Stephen Gregory, a Falun Gong practitioner who helped organize protests being held this week to coincide with Jiang's visit. "In a way, he is waging a war against his own people."

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-china22.html