Chris Suellentrop asks, Does Hu Jintao really run China? I read on renminbao.com that there's now an on-going struggle between Hu and the Jiang clique, but the article sounds a little hysterical. Laurie Garrett's China's Epidemic Discord talks about "contradictory edicts".

Update
John Pomfret: China Feels Side Effects From SARS: Political Fallout Follows Coverup:

The mishandling of the SARS crisis is feeding tentative calls for political reform in China and has exacerbated a broad power struggle among current and former Communist leaders, according to government sources, journalists and political analysts.

On one side of the divide is an increasingly strong alliance among China's new president, Hu Jintao, its new premier, Wen Jiabao, and senior officials allied with former premier Zhu Rongji, who have been moved quickly into positions of responsibility to deal with the crisis.

On the other side, government sources say, is a network of officials loyal to former president Jiang Zemin....

Officials loyal to Jiang, who stepped down from the presidency in March, are believed to have backed the idea of underreporting the SARS epidemic and lying to the World Health Organization and foreign governments about its spread...

The problem with Jiang's allies, however, is that most of them have little practical experience in handling day-to-day issues. For example, Vice President Zeng Qinghong, who rose to power as Jiang's enforcer within the party, is a skilled politician and is known as a trusted interlocutor by U.S. and Japanese officials. But he had never held a government job.

In his moves against the Jiang faction, Hu has found a willing ally in Wen Jiabao, the new premier, who rose to his position with the backing of his predecessor, Zhu Rongji, who battled with Jiang unsuccessfully for more than a decade in Beijing...

Jiang's allies were slow to respond to the about-face that Hu ordered for April 20, when the government inaugurated a nationwide campaign to begin truthful reporting about SARS. In the first few days, only Hu and Wen were seen on the state-run media. Slowly, each of Jiang's allies has emerged, somewhat halfheartedly supporting the campaign.

Jiang also expressed support for the new SARS campaign, but in a way that illustrated his conflict with Hu. On April 26, he made his first public statement about the virus from Shanghai, leaving many Chinese with the impression that he had fled the capital to escape the disease. Jiang appeared out of touch; Hu and Wen had been seen in the media almost daily on the front lines of the fight against SARS, at hospitals, universities and laboratories. And Jiang's remarks, saying "China has scored notable achievements in containing the disease," directly contradicted the tone being put forward by Hu and Wen that the disease had not been contained and that the country faced a crisis.