China's Hu looks to unity

Chinese President Hu Jintao is set to emerge from the Communist Party Congress commanding a new leadership core that reflects both his dominance and his careful calculus for preserving power and unity.

The stolid ritual of the Congress, which opens today with Hu's recital of achievements sure to draw dutiful applause from the 2,200 delegates, is a show of unity by the Party that governs over 1.3 billion people and the world's fourth biggest economy.

But the five-yearly meeting is also when Hu must take the potentially divisive step of shedding colleagues installed under his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and promoting younger leaders likely to form the Party's "fifth generation".

The meeting is set to promote two provincial leaders in their early 50s - Xi Jinping of Shanghai and Li Keqiang of the northeastern province Liaoning - to a nine-seat Politiburo Standing Committee, putting them in the wings as likely successors to Hu and government chief Premier Wen Jiabao five years hence, sources said.

The usually submissive Congress will vote in a new Central Committee, a council with hundreds of members that at the end of the Congress will endorse a new Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee, the innermost circle of power.

Hu has dominated the recruitment process but, reflecting a desire to avoid rifts, he has also been willing to promote officials without strong ties to himself yet acceptable to other elite constituencies, officials and analysts said.

The Standing Committee line up revealed after the Congress ends in about a week is thus likely to mimic the style Hu has set in the past five years: low-key, wary of ideological drama and preferring collective decision-making.