Five takeaways from Communist party congress

A third potential heir emerges Before to the party congress, the individuals seen as leading candidates to potentially succeed Xi were Chongqing party boss and former aide Chen Miner, 57, and Guangdong top leader Hu Chunhua, 54. On Wednesday, Xi threw a third person born in the 1960s into the mix. Ding Xuexiang, 55, is now the second youngest member of the Politburo after Hu. He has risen rapidly through the ranks after his 2007 appointment as the political secretary to Xi during his time as party chief of Shanghai. In 2013, he moved to Beijing to head the Presidential Office, where he accompanied Xi during nearly all of his overseas trips. He’s now in line to be Xi’s chief of staff. Politburo a grooming ground With Xi appointing no clear heirs to the Standing Committee, China watchers will pay more attention to the 25- member Politburo — a decision- making group of senior officials that meets monthly — as the main grooming ground for future leaders. It’s also a key measurement of Xi’s power. Not only did the President manage to stack the body with his allies but he also removed three officials who weren’t yet at the conventional retirement age and who weren’t seen as being from his camp. SOEs lose clout Five years ago, five executives from state- owned enterprises were promoted to the Central Committee, the Communist Party’s elite body that meets at least once a year to set policy. This year, none were appointed to the 204- member committee. Moreover, the Politburo Standing Committee — China’s most powerful body — included fewer people with experience at stateowned companies, according to calculations by Bloomberg Intelligence. The collective years of experience at state firms fell to 4 per cent this year from 11 per cent in 2012 and 29 per cent in 2007. By contrast, the newly elected committee has more experience running provincial governments than members of the two previous Standing Committees. Xi tightens grip on military Xi also shrank the Central Military Commission, the top military decision- making body, to seven members from 11, further cementing his authority as Commander- in- Chief of the world’s largest standing army. Four people of the 7- member committee had previously been promoted by Xi. 5. One woman out of 650 million In 1968, Mao Zedong famously said “women hold up half the sky”. These days China has about 650 million female citizens, but only one is represented on the Politburo — down from two in the previous lineup. The Standing Committee has never included a woman. The sole representative of roughly half the population is Sun Chunlan, 67.