Secret deals and political theatre as Communists usher in the new guard Jane Macartney in Beijing In a little over a week, in one of the ornate rooms of the Great Hall of the People, a curtain will open to reveal the men who will run China for the next five years, and possibly for much longer. Yet the process that appoints them to such prominence, just as China marches towards becoming a great power of the 21st century, remains cloaked in mystery. For all the skyscrapers, urban glitz and sheer modishness of the modern China that they inherit, their coming to power is more a throwback to the days of Mao jackets, bicycles and ration coupons.
The 2,213 delegates gather behind the stocky Stalinist pillars of the Great Hall this morning to hear President Hu Jintao's report to the five-yearly gathering. It is a unique piece of theatre. The protagonists perform mainly off stage. The bit players stick to a prepared script. And the final act, when the curtain finally opens, shows a line-up of men chosen after much horse-trading among leaders of interest groups and factions. The congress retains much of the secrecy of the founding meeting, when 13 delegates, including Mao Zedong, met in a Shanghai back alley. They had to flee a police search and ended the session drifting in a boat on a nearby lake.
These days, however, the police are deployed in huge numbers to maintain security and to sequester or lock up any potential critic. Banned from the skies are such security threats as model aircraft and paragliders. A volunteer army of 824,000, identified by armbands in the style of the Red Guards, will patrol the streets to watch out for unsavoury behaviour.