China announces details of elections to party congress, with poll likely to be most secretive in a decade By Jun Mai in SCMP, 10 November, 2016

Hours before Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the US presidential election on Wednesday, Beijing announced guidelines for arguably the most important election in China in five years.
Details were given of the poll among Communist Party members to act as delegates at the 19th Party Congress in Beijing in 2017.
It will vote on who will serve in the party’s top leadership over the following five years.
Unlike the American elections, with universal suffrage and projections in media outlets on the outcome of the vote, the party’s upcoming election is likely to be the most opaque in a decade, even by its own secretive standards, according to details released in a notice.
A total of 2,300 delegates will be elected by 40 electoral units across the country and the poll will be completed by June next year, according to a statement from the party’s Central Committee.
It stopped short, however, of mentioning any plan to make public the list of candidates for the elections.
This was carried for the 18th Party Congress five years ago and the one prior to that.
Beijing had urged lists of candidates to be “made visible within a certain range” during the 17th Congress and for public access to the information for the following convention five years later
A handful of provinces duly published the names of their candidates ahead of the 18th Party Congress, with state media reporting the move as a first.
The forthcoming elections will take place amid a major shift in the way cadres are evaluated for positions and appointments since President Xi Jinping took power.
A Communist Party plenum last month said that officials should “resolutely correct” the practice of selecting cadres on votes cast in their favour, points gleaned in internal evaluations and GDP growth in their jurisdictions.
The latest guidelines passed on at the party plenum said cadre appointments should be on based merit and capability, as well as firm political faith, without elaborating on what that meant.
No mention was made of a previous pilot programme introduced by former president Hu Jintao to appoint officials on the basis of “public nomination and direct election”.
The party election will also takes place amid intensive calls for political loyalty within its ranks to President Xi.
“The election should … be able to mobilise numerous party members and cadres to unite more closely around Comrade Xi Jinping as the core,” the directive said.
It also urged caution against vote rigging after what the party has called the worst election scandal since the foundation of the Communist state in 1949
China’s top legislature announced in September that it had discovered a massive vote buying scandal among national law makers, expelling 45 national legislators from Liaoning province who were elected in 2013.
The forty electoral units which will provide delegates for next year’s congress include 31 cities and provinces plus others constituencies covering areas such as the military and state-owned enterprises.
The 2,300 delegates will meet during the second half of next year when they will vote for more than 350 full and alternative members of the Central Committee.
They in turn will elect members of now 25-strong Politburo and its Standing Committee.
There has been speculation that the party might alter rules stipulating that senior leaders have to step down after reaching retirement age after comments last month by a senior official.
“That’s just what people believe about the existence of ‘67 in and 68 out’ and some Standing Committee members retiring before reaching 68,” said Deng Maosheng, who helped draft the communique for the party’s sixth plenum last month.
“The party makes adjustments according to the circumstances. There is no specific standard age for [Standing Committee members to retire],” Deng told reporters.
Analysts said the comment signalled that the current anticorruption chief Wang Qishan, who will be over 68 during the congress next year, may not have to step down.
The comments also add uncertainty over whether other officials in the Politburo will leave office after reaching retirement age.http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2044733/china-announces-details-elections-party-congress-poll