Less than 10 days after the US elects its president next month the Chinese people will find out who will lead them for the next five years.
But while voters in the US have a pretty good idea what they’re getting no matter who wins, China’s citizens won’t even know for sure how many will make up their top group of leaders until those people walk on to the stage at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on or around November 15.
For the past 10 years, the standing committee of the politburo of the Communist Party of China, which includes the president and premier, has consisted of nine members who ruled the world’s most populous nation through a system of collective decision-making. But most political analysts expect the number will be reduced to seven when the line-up is finally revealed at the end of the party’s 18th National Congress, which opens on November 8.