Party chief Xi Jinping (click here) has stacked Central Committee with loyalists
By Nectar Gan
...The previous Central Committee, which accompanied Xi Jinping through his first term as party general secretary, was largely picked by his predecessors. But at last month’s congress, which heralded the start of Xi’s “new era” and saw him emerge as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, it was Xi’s term to dominate personnel decisions.
The reshuffle of the central leadership was the most dramatic in decades, with 67.3 per cent of the new Central Committee’s members being newcomers. That compares with 50.6 per cent of the 16th Central Committee formed in 2002 and 48.7 per cent of the 18th Central Committee formed in 2012, according to data compiled by Cheng Li, a veteran China watcher at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank....
