China’s Hu Jintao warned on Thursday that corruption could be lethal to the Communist Party at the country’s conference to transfer power. Hu’s successor, Xi Jinping, is being unveiled this week at the 18th Communist Party Congress. Speaking at the Great Hall of the People to a crowd of over 2,600 delegates, Hu told the delegates they needed to focus on “social harmony” and “stability”—two goals that seem ever loftier after the scandal involving Bo Xilai, the senior Communist official expelled from the party following questions involving his involvement in the murder last year of British diplomat Neil Heywood.
