China’s CP Congress opens today

CHINA: Beijing’s vast Tiananmen Square was a sea of red flags, banners on Wednesday as China’s Communist Party prepared to gather nearby to appoint its new leaders.

More than 2,000 delegates will attend the five-yearly party congress that opens today.

At its close a week later, it will unveil the top brass who will govern the most populous country and second-largest economy for the next decade.

Visitors to the square -- a popular tourist site near the regime’s nerve centre and the scene of 1989 democracy protests crushed by authorities -- submitted themselves and their belongings, even water bottles, to security checks.

A towering floral arrangement stood 15 metres (49 feet) high at the centre of the square -- its massive scale matching that of the nearby Great Hall of the People, the Stalinist-style building that will host the congress. Delegates from around the country are meant to represent the world’s largest political party with 82 million members. Yet their main task will be to rubber-stamp a leadership succession carefully chosen by the party elite.

The week-long event begins on the eighth -- considered an auspicious number in China. The congress that installed President Hu Jintao as party chief 10 years ago started on the same date, while the Beijing Olympics opened on 08/08/2008.

The city has deployed a vast range of security forces -- military police, regular police, plain-clothes officers as well as 1.4 million volunteers, often retirees, wearing red armbards.

AFP