China's first lady puts style on the agenda

While China's first lady Peng Liyuan was turning heads in Durban and Pretoria with her elegant outfits, back home the thought police were swiftly scrubbing images of her singing to martial law police following the notorious 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Peng, 50, accompanied her husband, President Xi Jinping, on his first world tour since becoming China's head of state. The couple attended the Brics summit in Durban this week and also visited President Jacob Zuma at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

Her choice of attire sparked a flurry of excitement over an independent homegrown label, an unusual phenomenon in a country where political figures are more frumpy than fashionable and wives usually shy away from the spotlight.

Images of Peng have circulated widely on the Chinese internet, prompting praise of her style as understated and sophisticated.

Eagle-eyed fashion-savvy bloggers identified the leather handbag she carried and the smart, double-breasted black trench coat she wore as items designed by Guangzhou-based label Exception. The brand has been described as one of China's leading independent labels, whose simple but unique designs stand out in an industry dominated by Western copycats.

But later this week the flattering images of Peng on tour were joined by the controversial one of her, in younger days, entertaining the policemen. The picture revived a memory the leadership prefers to suppress and shows one of the challenges in presenting Peng on the world stage as the softer side of China.

The country has no recent precedent for the role of first lady and faces a tricky balance at home. The leadership wants Peng to show the human side of Xi while not exposing too many perks of the elite. And it must balance popular support for the first couple with an acute wariness of personality cults that could skew the consensus rule among the Chinese Communist Party's top leaders.

The image of Peng wearing a green military uniform, her windswept hair tied back in a ponytail as she sings to helmeted and rifle-bearing troops seated in rows on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, contrasts with her appearances this week in trendy suits and coiffed hair while touring Russia and Africa with Xi, waving to her enthusiastic hosts.

"I think we have a lot of people hoping that because Xi Jinping walks around without a tie on and his wife is a singer who travels with him on trips, that maybe we're dealing with a new kind of leader. But I think these images remind people that this is the same party," said Kelley Currie, a China human rights expert for the pro-democracy Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia, in the US.

"It's using some new tools and new techniques for the same purposes: to preserve its own power."

Peng, a major-general in the People's Liberation Army who is best known for soaring renditions of patriotic odes to the military and the party, kept a low profile in recent years as her husband prepared to take over as Chinese Communist Party chief.

Her re-emergence has been accompanied by a blitz in domestic state-run media hailing her beauty and charm in a bid to harness her popularity to build support for Xi at home and abroad.