Chinese Communist Party's 17th Central Committee has last gathering
The last gathering of the Communist Party's 17th Central Committee takes place in a hotel in Beijing today before the 18th national congress
The Communist Party's elite will meet in a closed-door conclave in the capital today as the party scrambles to wrap up preparations for the once-a-decade transfer of power that will officially start next week.
Around 370 members and alternative members of the party's 17th Central Committee will gather at the Jingxi Hotel for its seventh and last plenum.
It is one of the last opportunities for the party's leaders and their successors to finalise every important detail of the party's 18th national congress, which will open next Thursday.
High-stakes decisions on personnel arrangements involved in the generational handover and on policy issues that will set the country's direction for the coming decade will top the agenda for the plenum.
It will also formally expel the disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai and the former railways minister Liu Zhijun from the party.
Although all the paperwork to be tabled at the party congress should be finalised and approved by the plenum, analysts said last-minute changes were still highly likely before the official announcements at the end of the party congress, which is widely expected to last for a week, although there is no official announcement yet.
According to Politburo decisions over the past two months, the official agenda of the plenum will include the approval of a keynote address to be delivered by the party's general secretary, Hu Jintao , at the opening of the congress, and a proposed change to the party constitution.