ON OCTOBER 25th, one day after the close of a five-yearly congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the president, the prime minister and five lesser-known apparatchiks stepped onto a red carpet in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People and onto the world’s stage. They form the reshuffled inner sanctum of Chinese politics, the Politburo Standing Committee. For at least the next five years, they will be the most powerful decision-makers in China. Normally, the president’s successor would come from within their ranks.
But the most important fact about the new line-up was who was not there: there was no obvious successor to Xi Jinping (top row, centre), the president and party leader. Moreover, the new line-up was overshadowed by an event on the previous day, when the 2,300 delegates to the congress approved a revised version of the party’s constitution. Article 2 of the document lists the party’s guiding principles. The congress approved a new one: “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/2zQunQu
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