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Chinese President Hu Jintao has left his presumptive successor, Xi Jinping, with a vastly richer and militarily more powerful country than the one he himself inherited a decade ago. Yet the political legacy Mr Hu leaves behind may make all that irrelevant.

Not a man prone to hyperbole, President Hu used his November 8 speech at the outset of the 18th Party Congress (the gathering of top-party officials at which the leadership for the next five years will be announced) to warn his fellow Party leaders of the danger posed to their future by corruption: "If we fail to handle this issue well," Mr Hu warned, "it could prove fatal to the Party and even lead to the collapse of the Party and the fall of the State."