New leaders emerge at top gathering of nominal communists

Posted By David Francis Monday, October 22, 2007 - 3:51 PM Share

TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images

China's Communist Congress ended today with no real surprises. President Hu Jintao announced that Xi Jinping, chief of Shanghai, and Li Keqiang, head of the Liaoning province in northeast China, were appointed to the nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo, the country's most powerful political body. Xi and Li are now expected to replace Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao, although neither Hu or Wen are expected to leave office soon (and nobody really knows yet whether Xi or Li will get the top job). In introducing China's next generation of leaders, Hu had this to say:

Comrades Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are two quite young comrades.

That's not exactly heaping praise on the pair (To be fair, they are "quite young," relatively speaking Xi is 54; Li, 52). And it wasn't at all surprising, as they were widely predicted to be promoted.

So what else happened during the congress? Tune in tomorrow, when Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution, one of the world's top scholars on high-level Chinese politics, explains what really happened—and what to expect over the next few years—in a Web exclusive for FP.

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