Annual gathering to decide new leadership line-up
As China settles into the slow summer season, the ruling party cadres are looking ahead to their annual gathering at the seaside resort of Beidaihe.
The Communist Party's movers and shakers are getting ready to make their yearly trek to a secluded beach resort where they can splash out in privileged privacy.
When they make their move to the seaside compound later this month and in early August, they will engage in a final frenetic round of horsetrading aimed at sorting out the party's top jobs.
This is the meeting which probably will decide whether Communist Party chief and President Jiang Zemin steps down from his posts or clings to some of the reins of power at the party's 16th congress in September.
The Beidaihe meetings are likely to sort out the political deals that will be made public after the party congress, revealing the new line-up of China's next generation of leaders.
Bigger things are certainly in store for Vice-President Hu Jintao, but his future depends on how much power Mr Jiang is willing to share.
What many people here and abroad want to know is whether Mr Jiang will want to hold onto more than just the top spot at the party's powerful central military commission - which he is all but certain to keep. Speculation has been mounting that the 76-year-old leader wants to keep his post as party chief as well.
While the party's elite will have to deal with these weighty matters, for many of the others who manage to slip away from the office and make it to Beidaihe, this is just a time to relax.
'This week is when it starts getting busy here,' said a receptionist at the Wanghailou Guest House at the famous Beidaihe resort.
'It stays like this until the middle of August, and if you want a room you have to book two to three days in advance.'
Before the beach parties begin, however, some of China's top officials are trying to squeeze in a bit of foreign travel.
State Councillor Wu Yi - the most senior woman in the government - just led a team to Paris to make the final sales pitch to the International Bureau of Expositions on behalf of Shanghai's campaign to host Expo 2010.
China was taking no chances and loaded the delegation with senior officials. Besides Ms Wu, the group included Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Shanghai Mayor Chen Liangyu.
Shanghai wants to play host to the world's fair partly to ensure that it stays firmly on the map as a tourist destination in the years ahead. It boasts it will attract more than the record 64 million visitors who attended the 1970 Expo in Yokohama.
Moscow is seen as Shanghai's big rival in the contest that will not be decided until December.
Paris was not the only stop for the officials in the delegation, however.
State Councillor Wu and Foreign Minister Tang will do a little bit more travelling before they return to their Beijing offices. Ms Wu heads to former Eastern European countries, stopping in the Czech Republic, Poland, Albania and Bulgaria while Mr Tang makes a brief trip to Romania and Austria.
Meanwhile, ordinary Chinese will soon find that the door to foreign travel has opened a bit wider for them as well. Some 12 million Chinese went abroad last year but only about 300,000 of them travelled to Europe.
That is likely to change soon. Germany became the first member of the European Union to extend tourist visas to Chinese citizens, and that is likely to spur efforts for an EU-wide protocol.
Travellers will be able to restricted to group tour visits due to lingering concerns about illegal immigration. Turkey, Malta and Egypt have also recently signed tourist travel agreements with China. That has expanded the total number of travel destinations open to Chinese citizens to 19 - with most of those in the Asia-Pacific region. China has used tourism to stimulate its domestic economy but it is also witnessing growing demand for foreign travel from its increasingly wealthy citizens. That means more countries are likely to open their doors to travellers from the mainland.
