By K J M VarmaBeijing, Oct 14 (PTI) China's ruling Communist Partytoday appointed party officials close to President Xi Jinping,who is expected to get the party's endorsement for a secondterm, as the CPC concluded a key meeting to finalisepreparations for next weekÂ’s once-in-a-five-year Congress.
The four-day Seventh Plenary Session of the outgoing 18thCentral Committee of the CPC concluded today, state-run Xinhuanews agency reported.
President Xi, who is also the General Secretary of theparty, delivered a work report at the meeting.
The Congress will be convened from October 18 here.
The Congress is expected to further strengthen Xi's holdon power by stacking the Politburo and its Standing Committee– the top decision-making bodies – with his loyalists andhaving his political theory enshrined in the party charter,the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
The meeting also endorsed an amendment draft to the partyconstitution to be submitted to the Congress. The amendment iswidely expected to see Xi's political theory added to thepartyÂ’s ever-expanding "guiding ideology", the Post reported.
Observers are watching to see whether Xi's theory will benamed after him, meaning he would follow in the footsteps of"Mao Zedong Thought" and "Deng Xiaoping Theory", it said.
The Congress will "implement the spirit of GeneralSecretary Xi Jinping's series of important speeches and newconcepts, new thinking and new strategies on the governance ofthe country", according to a communique released today.
The plenum has also ratified the Politburo's earlierdecisions to expel 12 disgraced Central Committee members fromthe party, put two others on probation and remove another fromhis post.
The expelled officials include Sun Zhengcai, formerhigh-flying Chongqing party chief and the Politburo member.
The expelled full members were replaced by 11 alternatemembers, including Jiangsu party chief Li Qiang.
Li, 58, was Xi's top aide during his time in Zhejiang andis seen as a front runner for promotion to the 25-memberstrong Politburo at the Congress, which will mark the start ofXi's second term, the Post reported.
It will also see Xi strengthen his grip on power after afirst term that saw the downfall of more full and alternatemembers of the Central Committee than ever before, it said.
Zhu Lijia, a professor at the Chinese Academy ofGovernance, said the large number of seats to be filled wasunprecedented.
"In the past, when the anti-corruption drive was lesssevere, there were far fewer Central Committee members beingbrought down. So usually just two or three members had to bereplaced at plenums – it was never on this scale," he told thePost.
The meeting also discussed the draft work report of theCentral Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), headed byXiÂ’s close aide Wang Qishan, 69, who carried out a massiveanti-corruption drive against some of the top leaders of theprevious administration like security czar Zhou Yongkong andtop Generals of the military.
Besides massive purges of Zhou and his men down theranks, the recent CCDI report said over 1.34 million officialswere punished in the anti-graft campaign. That included over40 top Generals and 13,000 personnel of the various ranks.
The 89-million-strong CPC which ruled the country since1949, the longest party in power, has a constitutionalstructure but much of its leadership structure is based onconventions like two five-year terms for the top leaders and68 as their retirement age.
Since the convention was evolved in 2002, all the leadersincluding the XiÂ’s predecessors Hu Jintao and Premier WenJiabao followed it as an unwritten rule and retired.
Another widely followed convention is the identificationof a successor in the second term.
While the next weekÂ’s Congress is expected to furtherreinforce power base of Xi, who has already been named by theparty as a "core leader" like founder Chairman Mao and hissuccessor Deng Xiaoping speculation is rife whether he willbreak the convention and pave the way for his third term.
A total of 2,287 delegates elect the new CPC CentralCommittee and new CPC Central Commission for DisciplineInspection during the Congress. PTI KJV ZH AKJZH.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.