CHINA: Fighting corruption was top of the official agenda as China's communist elite began a leadership meeting at a secret location in Beijing yesterday, but speculation about high-level personnel changes was causing a major stir behind the scenes.
The question everyone is asking about the plenum of the Communist Party's 198-member Central Committee is whether the former leader, Mr Jiang Zemin, who retains massive power as head of the armed forces, will hand total control to his successor, President Hu Jintao, and Premier Wen Jiabao.
No one knows where the gathering of the Communist Party's elite is taking place, although the location is thought to be a top Beijing hotel, based on the evidence of a nearby traffic jam.
The official Xinhua news agency published a terse report saying the four-day plenum would "deliberate on issues concerning the improvement of the party's ruling capacity" and "how to improve its governance in line with the development of market economy." State TV made no mention of the meeting.
Despite the veil of secrecy, the plenum is closely watched, as the outcome is a useful bellwether of the political situation in China and shows who really rules the roost in the world's most populous nation.
The Communist Party, which was founded in Shanghai in 1921, has been the sole ruler of China since it came to power after the 1949 revolution. However, it has implemented modest market reforms in recent years, often referred to as socialism with Chinese characteristics.
The party is focusing on improving party governance as it is worried that rampant corruption by local officials and police could undermine its authority.
Public dissatisfaction about corrupt practices has traditionally been a source of much civil unrest in China, most recently in 1989 when pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square listed an end to graft as one of their demands.
The government has carried out very public purges of thousands of corrupt officials, including high-ranking cadres, but there is no sign that the crackdowns are stopping corruption.
But the big issue everyone is focusing on is: will Mr Jiang quit as chairman of the Central Military Commission? The rivalry between Mr Jiang (78) and the 61-year-old Mr Hu, who replaced him as party chief in 2002 and as president in 2003, has emerged slowly but surely into the open in recent weeks.
Mr Jiang is said to be unhappy with the current administration's handling of the economy but, other than that, he and Mr Hu don't really have any major disagreements about policy.
The Communist Party has a long tradition of keeping personnel changes in the leadership a secret.