Old leadership meets China’s cry for reforms

New party chief Xi Jinping, premier-in-waiting Li Keqiang and vice-premier in charge of economic affairs Wang Qishan, all named as expected to the elite decision-making Politburo Standing Committee, are considered cautious reformers. The other four members have the reputation of being conservative.

The line-up belied any hopes that Xi would usher in a leadership that would take bold steps to deal with slowing growth in the world’s second-biggest economy, or begin to ease the Party’s iron grip on the most populous nation.

“We’re not going to see any political reform because too many people in the system see it as a slippery slope to extinction,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. “They see it entirely through the prism of the Soviet Union, the Arab Spring and the Colour Revolutions in Central Asia, so they’re not going to go there.”

Vice-Premier Wang, the most reform-minded in the line-up, has been given the role of fighting widespread graft, identified by Xi and outgoing President Hu Jintao as the biggest danger faced by the party and the state.

One source said an informal poll was held by over 200 voting members in the party’s central committee to choose the seven members of the standing committee from among 10 candidates. Two

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