I don't understand your votes against Hu Jintao so early.
There is still Song,
Hua Guofeng, not really a great democrat...
Jiang Zemin (who was loyal to Deng when the latter decided to crush Tiananmen;
Jiang managed to use this situation to become powerful, by being from "business-friendly" and "apolitical" Shanghaï -and not from restive and "politicized" Beijing- and so to be a more consensual candidate for General Secretariate than Li Peng) (Qiao Shi was the only one in the top management to be a bit worried about military crushing)
Li Xiannian, not really a big reformist and viewed in a positive way only because he had no real big power
and even... another one
Granted, Hu Jintao is a bit of a disappointment, is conservative on political matters, was very harsh in Tibet at the end of the 1980s-beginning of the 1990s.
But he isn't an arch-conservative, he is quite able to manage the complex financial, banking and currency policies in China.
