Hong Kong (CNN) -- Those who think the U.S.
electoral college is a complicated system for choosing a leader should
take a look at China right now.
Thousands of senior
officials from around the world's most populous nation have gathered in
Beijing amid heavy security for a week of lengthy speeches and
jargon-heavy meetings that began Thursday.
At the end of it all, the once-in-a decade process will unveil a new set of top leaders to the world.
There will be no frenzy
of exit polls and ballot counting. The major outcomes of the ruling
Communist Party's 18th National Congress, as the event is known, have
been determined in advance after months of secretive maneuvering and deal-making among senior party figures.
The method may be arcane,
but the result matters for China's 1.3 billion citizens and for
countries around the globe like the United States that are trying to
decipher what the Asian giant's growing international clout means for
them.
The only problem is, nobody's sure exactly what China's new top brass will do once they have assumed power.
Photos: China's top leaders meet
During the race for the
White House in the United States, President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt
Romney eagerly brandished their credentials for getting tough on China,
with Obama citing trade suits he'd filed and Romney promising to label
Beijing a currency manipulator.
China's prospective
leaders, however, are a great deal more circumspect about their policies
-- both domestic and international -- often speaking in broad,
ambiguous terms.
"Chinese leaders don't
rise to the top telegraphing what changes they'll do," said Bruce J.
Dickson, a political science professor at George Washington University's
Elliott School of International Affairs. "They rise to the top showing
how loyal they are to the incumbent. What they'll do when they rise to
the top -- that's the big question."
Uncertainty breeds
speculation, and the unfolding leadership change has generated a wealth
of theories from observers about what the next 10 years might hold.
Some say they expect
measures to reshape China's huge economy, in which state-owned companies
play a powerful role. Others predict the army may have a stronger
influence amid rising tensions over territorial disputes with neighbors
like Japan.
And rumors continue to circulate about the possibility of democratic reforms
as leaders seek greater legitimacy in the wake of a huge political
scandal this year involving the former senior party official Bo Xilai,
and widespread corruption among officials throughout the country.
Addressing the start of
the congress on Thursday, President Hu Jintao warned that the inability
to deal with corruption could bring down the party and the state it has
controlled for the past 63 years.
"If we fail to handle
this issue well, it could prove fatal to the party," he told a vast room
of delegates in the Great Hall of the People in the heart of Beijing.
Whether or not the party succeeds in that battle depends partly on Vice President Xi Jinping, who is set to pick up the post of party chief from Hu, 69, during the congress.
Xi, 59, is expected to become president early next year.
But like most of the other leaders set to surround him at the top of the party, Xi's stance on many key issues remains opaque.
The son of one of Mao
Zedong's top lieutenants, Xi is considered a "princeling" because of his
family's place in the Communist Party aristocracy. He is also believed
to be close to the Chinese military.
In a visit to the United
States in February, he talked of the two nations' "interwoven
interests" and said they "should reduce misunderstanding and suspicion."
He met with U.S. leaders, including Obama, and returned to a small city in Iowa where he had stayed 27 years previously to learn about agricultural practices.
Although his trip left
many none the wiser about the direction in which he is likely to lead
China, some observers see reasons for optimism.
"Vocally, he's a
nationalist. Psychologically, he greatly hopes to keep good relations
with the West, especially the U.S.," said Pin Ho, chairman of Mirror
Books, which published a biography of Xi this year. Ho noted that Xi's
daughter, Xi Mingze, studies at Harvard under a pseudonym.
Internal challenges await
Besides grappling with
the United States on prickly issues like trade and human rights, Xi and
his likely deputy, current Vice Premier Li Keqiang, will inherit a
daunting array of internal challenges.
Under Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao, China's economy has continued to grow, lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty.
China is now the world's
second-biggest economy and closing fast on the United States. But there
have been disappointments and discontent along the way, and Hu's much
vaunted "harmonious society" is showing signs of cracking.
Chinese leaders have
endured a tumultuous year. The veil of secrecy around the party has been
lifted, with reports of rifts and infighting. And the fall of Bo
brought about China's biggest political scandal in decades.
Bo, once party chief of
the massive metropolis of Chongqing, is now in disgrace awaiting trial.
His wife, Gu Kailai, is in prison, convicted of murdering a British
business associate.
Senior party leaders and
their leaders have had to deal with unusual scrutiny of their affairs,
with Western news organizations publishing investigations into the
wealth accumulated by the families of Xi and Wen.
Chinese authorities
responded to the reports by blocking the websites of the news
organizations involved: Bloomberg News and The New York Times.
But China's army of
censors is having to grapple with the rapid rise of social media
platforms on which information moves and mutates at a dizzying pace.
China is treading many
fault lines: a widening gap between rich and poor, rising unrest about
issues like pollution and land seizures, and a slowing economy that some
say is in need of serious reform.
Hu mentioned some of
those tensions Thursday along with several other contentious issues --
like food safety, health care and the criminal justice system --
acknowledging that "there are a lot of difficulties and problems on our
road ahead."
The Tibet issue
Another issue Hu's
government has struggled to tackle during its decade in power is the
discontent and unrest among Tibetans living under Chinese rule.
Authorities were given a
grim reminder on Wednesday of the disillusionment and desperation of
many Tibetans in western areas of China after four people set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule.
One teenage Tibetan monk
died and two were injured after self-immolating in a majority Tibetan
region of Sichuan Province, said Penpa Tsering, a spokesman for the
Tibetan parliament in exile in Dharamsala, India. And a 23-year-old
Tibetan woman died a separate incident in Qinghai Province, Tsering
said, citing unidentified people in Tibetan areas.
Dozens of Tibetans are
reported to have set themselves ablaze in the past 18 months to express
their unhappiness with Chinese rule. And the central government in
Beijing is also dealing with other restive ethnic groups, like the
Uyghurs in the western province of Xinjiang.
A changing of the guard
Facing up to these
difficulties with Xi and Li will be a raft of other newly promoted
officials in the upper echelons of the party.
More than 2,200
delegates from across China are in attendance at the congress this week.
The congress itself meets every five years. It is designed to assess
the country's progress, and set new directions. Every 10 years it
selects the new leadership.
The delegates will pick
the roughly 200 members of the party's Central Committee, about
three-quarters of whom are expected to be replaced, mostly because of
their age.
The Central Committee
chooses the members of the Politburo, from which the powerful Politburo
Standing Committee is selected. The handful of leaders who make up the
Standing Committee are China's top decision makers.
Feverish speculation over exactly which leaders will make it into that elite group has intensified in recent weeks.
Xi and Li appear to be
sure bets. But the definitive line-up isn't expected to be known until
the end of the congress next week, when the chosen few are likely to
stride out onto the stage.
They will then have to take up the forbidding task of charting a course for the huge, diverse nation.
Not only will they have
to agree on what policies to pursue, according to Guy de Jonquières, a
senior fellow at the European Center for International Political
Economy, "they must also show that they can implement them effectively,
often against strong resistance from within the party's own ranks."
It is still far too
early to tell whether they will fare better than their predecessors,
Jonquières, who is based in London, wrote in an opinion article for CNN's Global Public Square blog.
"More time and more political (green) tea leaf-reading will be needed before clear answers start to emerge," he said.
CNN's Elizabeth Yuan and Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong, and Stan Grant in Beijing contributed to this report.
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