Global Impact: It’s here. 20th party congress set to begin with Xi Jinping’s legacy front and centre

Global Impact is a fortnightly curated newsletter featuring a news topic originating in China with a significant macro impact for our newsreaders around the world

In this edition, we look at how over 2,000 delegates for the 20th party congress are selected and what we can expect over the coming days

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President Xi Jinping opened the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party together with over 2,200 party delegates at the Great Hall of People on Sunday. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:00pm, 17 Oct 2022Updated: 2:56pm, 17 Oct 2022

An epoch-making event is about to unfold in Beijing. President Xi Jinping, who has been called China’s most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping, will open the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party together with over 2,200 party delegates at the Great Hall of People.

The delegates, who represent 96 million Communist Party members nationwide, were chosen through a stringent selection process which started more than a year ago.

While a fair share of them are senior party and government leaders, a significant number are the rank and file, who were selected by taking into account their professional achievements, ethnicity and party track records.

State media has, in recent weeks, presented some of them as the party’s unsung heroes, but they also include some household names such as top respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan and astronaut Wang Yaping, the first Chinese woman to perform a spacewalk.

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Explainer: What is the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th national congress?

Among the delegates, around 200 will form the presidium to oversee congress functions in accordance with the party’s constitution. The presidium’s standing committee – a core group of around 40 people – will likely include more than a dozen retired party elders. Their presence at the congress is a rare opportunity for the outside world to have a glimpse of their health condition.

Unlike the political party conventions in Western countries, the delegates will not be listening to passionate speeches by keynote speakers or politicians at the congress. Instead, they will spend most of the time studying and discussing the work report by Xi.