Retired leaders in China’s Communist Party used a last-minute straw poll to block two pro-reform candidates from joining the policymaking standing committee, including one who had alienated party elders, sources with ties to the leadership said.
Two sources said the influential retirees flexed their muscles in landmark informal polls taken before last week’s 18th party congress, where the seven-member standing committee, the apex of China’s power structure, was unveiled.
The clout of the elder statesmen, who include former party chief Jiang Zemin and ex-parliament head Li Peng, underscores the obstacles to even limited reform within senior levels of the party, which has held continuous power since 1949.
The informal polls are the first time the party has flirted with “intra-party democracy” to settle factional fighting over the line-up of the standing committee. It held informal polls in 2007 to decide the larger Politburo.
Two of the candidates voted out of the standing committee were widely viewed as reformers: Wang Yang, the party chief of export powerhouse Guangdong province in the south, and Li Yuanchao, minister of the party’s organisation or personnel department.
Neither Wang nor Li could be reached for comment. The party spokesman’s office declined immediate comment.