(Bloomberg) — The Chinese Communist Party’s twice-a-decade leadership congress will begin on Oct. 16, state media said, bringing President Xi Jinping a step closer to an unprecedented third term in power.
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The 20th Party Congress’s start date was announced Tuesday by the official Xinhua News Agency, citing a Politburo meeting held on the same day.
The Chinese leader is expected to extend his decade in power at the event, after lifting presidential term limits in 2018. The week-long pageant will also be scrutinized for signs Xi, 69, plans to ease the Covid Zero policy that’s kept deaths low but triggered anger and economic hardship. Investors will be alert for signals that the world’s second-largest economy will advance its common prosperity drive to shrink the wealth gap, and reforms in major sectors including technology.
Read: Why China’s 2022 Party Congress Will Be a Landmark: QuickTake
The gathering of some 2,300 party delegates at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing will also give Xi the chance to reshuffle scores of top government positions. Two other members of the Politburo’s seven-strong elite inner cabinet — National People’s Congress Chairman Li Zhanshu and Vice Premier Han Zheng — would be expected to retire under the succession norms Xi has brought into question.
Premier Li Keqiang, 67, announced in March he’ll leave his post after this year, raising doubts his future as No. 2 on the Standing Committee, despite being young enough to retain the position.
Read: China’s Premier Says Term Ending as Questions Over Xi Future Remain
International affairs will also weigh on the agenda. While stability had been the party’s guiding principle going into this year, a Washington-led diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics in February, calls for Beijing to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August gave Xi a turbulent path to the event.
The congress itself is heavily stage managed with little room for surprise, despite being billed as a decision-making body. It’s only when Xi strides along a red carpet at the summit’s close with the new leadership line-up following him in order of importance that China’s 1.4 billion people will learn who will be running their economy, military and foreign policy.
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