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 Hu signed off on the probe into disgraced former aide Ling Jihua,
who is suspected of trying to cover up his son's death in a luxury
sports car crash two years ago, people with ties to the leadership
said.
The party announced last week that Ling was being investigated for
"suspected serious discipline violations" - the usual euphemism for
graft. It gave no other details.
"In investigating Ling, Xi was not targeting Hu," one individual
with ties to the leadership told Reuters. "Hu did not (try to) block
the investigation. He agreed to and supported it when consulted."
Hu stepped down as party and military chief in 2012 and as state
president the following year in the first clean handover of power
since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.
Ling was first demoted in September 2012 after sources said his son
was involved in a fatal crash involving his Ferrari sports car in
Beijing six months earlier.
 The incident was an embarrassment for the party, which is sensitive
to perceptions that children of top party officials lead rich,
privileged lifestyles completely out of touch with the general
population.
Ling is suspected of unilaterally mobilizing the party's Central
Bodyguards Bureau and trying to cover up his son's death, the
sources said. "Ling failed to control his wife and son," a second
person said, referring to Chinese Internet reports of scandals
implicating Ling's wife.
Ling was dropped from his post as head of the party's General Office
of the Central Committee, a powerful post similar to cabinet
secretary in Westminster-style governments, following the crash. He
was then appointed as minister for the less influential United Front
Work Department, which is in charge of co-opting non-Communists,
religious groups and ethnic minorities.
RISING SUN
On Tuesday, state media said Sun Chunlan, a rising star in the party
who had been party boss of Tianjin and is one of China's few senior
female politicians, would become the new head of the United Front.
However, Ling is still shown as one of the deputy heads of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a high-profile
but largely ceremonial advisory body to parliament, on its website.
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CE Weekly, a news website run by the party's official People's
Daily, on Monday ran a long story on Ling and his family, and made a
rare mention of the car accident in which his son died. The story
was picked up more widely by Chinese media on Tuesday.
The website said Ling went to work as normal the day after the
crash, adding there were also two women in the car who were injured
and in a "state of partial undress".
"The death of his son really affected his mental state," said a
third individual. "Ling had been thought of before as an upright
official."
It was not possible to reach Ling for comment and it is not clear if
he has a lawyer.
Speculation about Ling's fate had been running high after a probe
into his older brother, Ling Zhengce, was announced in June for
suspected "serious discipline and law violations". After Ling
Zhengce fell, the official Xinhua news agency noted cryptically that
"having somebody in the palace won't help", in pointed reference to
his family connections.
China's campaign against official corruption has intensified since
Xi took over as president, with several senior government figures
and state company executives in detention, including the powerful
former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang.
(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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