Communist Party's elite holds secret succession talks

Beijing (Agencies): China's Communist Party elite held secretive talks on Sunday wihout a new generation of leaders to be formally elected this week when President Jiang Zemin and other party chieftains retire.

Delegates to the 16th Party Congress in the Great Hall of the People gave only the vaguest of hints about the reshuffle in which Jiang is expected to cede his post as party boss to Vice President Hu Jintao but cling to power from behind the scenes.

We are talking about it now," Zhang Lichang, party boss of the northern city of Tianjin, told Reuters when asked about the leadership changes thrashed out behind closed doors in the last few months. The party will arrange it," said Zhang, a member he party's incumbent Central Committee of about 300 members.

Jiang and others over 70, including parliament chief Li Peng and Premier Zhu Rongji, are due to quit party posts in what was supposed to be the first succession in Communist China governed by rules and institutions rather than violence and intrigue.

But after months of murky maneuvering, Jiang, 76, has secured promotion of key allies to the new leadership and a place in the party constitution for his political theory so he can continue to call the shots, party sources say.

The five-yearly congress marks the most dramatic reshuffle since Jiang was chosen to head the party in a leadership purge after the 1989 crackdown on student protests on Tiananmen Square.

But state media and officials are under strict orders not to discuss personnel changes, one indication of how political reforms have lagged far behind economic development under Jiang.

"Why are you asking this? This is a matter for us to discuss, not for you," Lu Ruihua, governor of the southern province of Guangdong, told reporters when asked about the succession.

"We don't know now," he said when asked if Guangdong party boss Li Changchun, a Jiang favorite. would join the Politburo . Standing Committee — the party's top decision-making body which now has seven members.

State media said that a pivotal leading body under China's Communist Party approved draft amandement lo the party's constitution on Sunday, suggesting Jiang has moved one step closer to a lasting legacy.

The presidium of the party's Congress, in charge of organizing the ongoing meeting in Beijing, gave the green light to the constitutional amendments at an afternoon meeting, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The agency did not say what was in the amendments, but it is widely assumed they are based on ideas proposed by Jiang to allow new social groups — including capitalists — to enter the party.

The presidium's approval is a formality, as the amendments are still subject to a vote among the 2,114 delegates at the Congress.

A move accepting the "Three Represents" theory as party orthodoxy would be a major victory for Jiang in his efforts to secure a lasting legacy after his likely immunent retirement.

The clumsily-named theory decrees that the party does not only represent workers and peasants, but the masses in general including "advanced production forces," understood to mean capitalists.

As well as justifying Jiang in controversial crusade to induct businesspeople, the Three Represents has long been touted by stair media as the key to modernizing, the Communist Party and China as a whole.