- (AFP) -- China began a sweeping generational change of
its leadership as President Jiang Zemin and five other elderly leaders
stood down from their posts in the ruling Communist Party.
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- Premier Zhu Rongji and party number two Li Peng were
also among the leaders not elected to the party's new Central Committee
on Thursday morning, the official Xinhua news agency said.
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- All top leaders must be members of the elite 300-plus
body, and the stage is now set for 59-year-old Vice President Hu Jintao
to take over as head of the party which has ruled China since 1949.
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- Hu is also expected to become president next spring at
the annual meeting of the country's parliament when Jiang and the other
leaders relinquish their state positions as well.
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- Hu was the only member of the party's current seven-member
Politburo Standing Committee, China's top governing body, who entered the
new Central Committee, Xinhua said.
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- Jiang, 76, immediately hailed the changeover process.
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- "The Central Committee for the new term has been
elected at the Congress, thus ensuring the smooth succession of the new
collective at the central leadership of the party to the previous one,"
Jiang said at the Congress's closing session.
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- The news ends months of speculation about a major clear-out
at the top levels of the country's secretive and authoritarian political
system.
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- "This is good. They have to replace the old leaders,"
said Li Xinmin, a delegate from the central province of Henan told AFP.
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- The other Standing Committee members bowing out are Li
Ruihuan, 68, Wei Jianxing, 71, and Li Lanqing, 70, Xinhua said.
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- Jiang, however appeared to have secured a significant
boost in ensuring his influence continues beyond retirement by having the
party constitution incorporate his pet theory paving the way for capitalist
entrepreneurs to become party members.
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- The Congress unanimously approved an amendment to the
party charter enshrining Jiang's "Three Represents" idea, Xinhua
said.
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- "The amended party constitution adopted at the Congress
establishes the important thought of the Three Represents along with Marxism-Leninism,
Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping theory as the party's guiding ideology."
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- Three Represents in Jiang's shorthand for the idea that
the Communist Party should not only stand for the working class but also
"advanced production forces", meaning entrepreneurs.
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- However the amendment did not appear to mention Jiang
by name, which some observers had said he had wanted in order to elevate
his name in the charter alongside predecessors Mao and Deng.
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