Explainer | How are China’s top Communist Party leaders nominated?
- List likely to be based on small, face-to-face meetings, many involving President Xi Jinping
- Previous use of ballots abandoned five years ago over concerns vote could be rigged
China’s most important decisions are made by the Communist Party’s 25-member Politburo and its seven-member Standing Committee, but how those members are selected has always been opaque and has become even less clear in the past 15 years.
Immediately after the party’s national congress, which will open on Sunday, the newly elected Central Committee is expected to endorse a list of Politburo members and those who will sit on its standing committee.
Limited details of the selection process will be publicised only after the new line-up is revealed, but the party said five years ago that it had been adopted in response to vote-rigging by very senior officials in the previous decade.
Once the list of nominees is finalised, few changes are expected as it is passed around various party bodies.
Between April and June in 2017, Xi met 57 incumbent and retired senior officials to hear their nominations, while other senior leaders met 258 ministerial-level officials for theirs, Xinhua reported.
The nominations were for members of the Politburo, its Standing Committee, the Central Military Commission, the party’s secretariat – which now has seven members – as well as key members of the State Council and members of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference representing the party, Xinhua said.