WITH all the pomp, pageantry and protest-deterring security, which are traditional at such affairs, the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), will open on March 5th. Its agenda includes an unusually weighty topic: the discussion (and inevitable approval) of a plan for the country’s economic development in the next five years—the Communist Party’s recipe, in effect, for ensuring that the world’s second-largest economy does not stall. But many of the officials at the meeting will be worrying about a more pressing matter: their jobs.
The biggest reshuffle in five years of leadership posts at every level of the Communist Party is getting under way. Hundreds of thousands of party bosses and their colleagues will be replaced, in everything from township party committees to state-owned enterprises. These changes will affect a series of other appointments: party leaders at every level are sometimes given concurrent titles such as mayor, CEO, or, in the case of Xi Jinping, whose main job is as the party’s general secretary, the largely honorific role of president.
The drawn-out process...Continue reading
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