China's ruling party leadership were locked in a much-anticipated meeting yesterday in Beijing amid an apparent power struggle at the heart of the 68-million-member organization.
Some 198 top party officials joined hundreds of "leading cadres" for four days of talks behind closed doors at the Fourth Plenum of the 16th Central Committee aimed at bolstering the party's waning image.
"Enhancing the party's ruling capacity is a major issue of strategic importance to the fate of both the building of socialism and the Chinese nation," state-controlled Xinhua news agency said.
But hanging as a shadow over the talks were concerns that decision-making in the top echelons of the party could be close to paralysis as leadership remained divided between two generations of politicians.
Speculation is rife that former party leader Jiang Zemin, 78, is refusing to step down from his position as commander-in-chief of the military, preventing current party leader Hu Jintao, 61, from exercising effective power.
Jiang's chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, arguably the most powerful body in the country's closed political system, gives him immense power in areas such as security and foreign policy.
Some analysts have suggested he will hold on to his position until 2007, while others believe he could very well be forced to resign at this week's meeting.
The government has called the suggestions "groundless," but observers have argued the cost of the rivalry may already be visible in a conspicuous lack of recent Chinese successes in areas like Taiwan and the Korean nuclear standoff.
Dozens of police officers, many of them plain-clothes, swarmed the area around Jingxi Hotel in the western part of the capital, where the meeting was being held.
At least 14 protesters were being held in police custody after being picked up around the hotel.
"I have grievances to air, I wanted to find the leaders," Zhang Zhenxin, 48, told AFP by telephone from Yangfangdain police station.
Zhang, who wanted to complain about the demolition of his house, said he was forced into a police car by officers who told him they could help solve his problems.
Minimum information about the meeting was being released to the public who were only told by Xinhua that inner-party governance was a key element in the deliberations.
This is in line with previous pledges by the party to improve its methods of recruiting and nurturing new talent in order to combat the risk of becoming irrelevant, analysts said.
"The party has no intention of giving up its monopoly of power, it has no intention of engaging in democratic reform," said Joseph Cheng, a China watcher at City University of Hong Kong.
"But it realizes it has to strengthen its base of support, and it has to enhance legitimacy by being more responsive to the people," he said.
But reform of the communist party does not mean democracy is on the agenda for society as a whole.
Hu said Wednesday no Western democratic practices -- such as separation of powers and multi-party and multi-candidate direct elections at the top levels of government -- would be implemented.
"History indicates that indiscriminately copying Western political systems is a blind alley for China," Hu said.
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