In some cases, strategies Hu employed -- easy bank credit, a bigger security apparatus and a reliance on huge state companies -- have made matters worse, adding slowing growth and rising debt to problems like cronyism, corruption and injustice that are driving large-scale protests.
"Behind all these achievements are problems," wrote Deng Yuwen, an editor at a party newspaper, in a scathing analysis that was posted online in September but has since been expunged from Internet sites in China.
Deng said Hu's failure to take meaningful steps toward political change has "resulted in the Communist Party itself facing a crisis in its legitimacy to rule."
Calls from retired party members, academics and other commentators are building for Hu's successor, Xi, to take on political reform, from making the system more transparent to moving toward democracy.
The issue has stood untouched since the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement was crushed by military force.
A research paper by the government-backed China Society for Economic Reform said in August that a new revolution might erupt without a fundamental shift in the current model.
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