BEIJING: Speculation intensified on Friday over who will be named the new
leaders of China's Communist Party as the country's political elite met for a
second day ahead of a once-in-a-decade power handover.
Hong Kong-based Mirror Books
website, which has accurately predicted China's incoming leaders in the past,
said it believed the new line-up would be dominated by party conservatives
unlikely to make major reforms.
The South China Morning Post
newspaper made the same prediction on Friday, citing sources close to the inner
workings of the power transition.
The Politburo Standing Committee
of the Chinese Communist Party currently consists of nine men, including Hu
Jintao who will step down as general secretary at the 18th Party Congress which
begins next week, and his presumed successor, Vice President Xi Jinping.
Xi is expected to replace Hu,
while current Vice Premier Li Keqiang appears set to take over from Prime Minister
Wen Jiabao.
In addition to Xi and Li - the
only current leaders who will not retire from the standing committee - Mirror
Books predicted the new line-up would include Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu
Yunshan, Zhang Gaoli and Wang Qishan, citing sources close to the party.
The committee is expected to be
cut from nine members to seven in an effort to simplify its consensus-style
rule, while Hu and Wen will formally step down from their roles as president
and premier in March.
About 500 top officials are
attending the secretive Central Committee meeting that began on Thursday to
finalise the top appointments, ahead of the Congress.
"This looks like the
line-up. It is not one that will be good for reform hopes," Willy Lam, a
prominent China watcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told AFP.
"Barring any overwhelming
opposition to these people (at the Central Committee meeting), there is
unlikely to be any last-minute changes."
The final line-up of the new
committee will not be made public until the close of the party congress in
mid-November, although analysts have drawn up numerous lists as debate rages
about who will be included and how the choices will affect the country.
Most of the named newcomers have
ties to China's 86-year-old former president Jiang Zemin, while prominent
reformers and proteges linked to Hu will not win places on the committee, Lam
said.
The central committee meeting
will likely end on Saturday, he said.
The leadership debate has been
complicated by ongoing graft and other scandals linked to top leaders -
including ousted former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, who is likely to be
expelled from the party.
- AFP/al/de
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