China's president clears way for VP to take helm

Updated 2:50 a.m. ET

BEIJING President Hu Jintao stepped aside as ruling party leader Wednesday to clear the way for Vice President Xi Jinping to take China's helm as part of only the second orderly transfer of power in 63 years of communist rule.

Hu and senior leaders, mostly in their late 60s, are handing over power to the leader-in-waiting Xi and other colleagues in their late 50s over the next several months.

The new leadership faces daunting challenges, including slowing growth in the world's No. 2 economy, rising unrest among increasing assertive citizens and delicate relations with neighboring countries.

In keeping with the widely anticipated succession plans, Hu was not re-elected a member of the party's Central Committee on the final day of a pivotal party congress, showing that he's no longer in the leadership, said two delegates, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official list of members had not yet been released.

It was still unclear whether Hu would relinquish his most powerful remaining position as head of the commission that oversees the military, or hold onto it for a transitional period as previous retiring leaders have done.

Delegates said they cheered when the announced results of secret balloting showed that Xi had been unanimously chosen for the committee, a step toward being named to the topmost panel, the Politburo Standing Committee, and becoming party leader as expected on Thursday. Li Keqiang, designated as the next premier, also was elected to the panel, the state Xinhua News Agency said.

"We were very happy and the whole assembly responded with warm applause," said delegate Si Zefu, president of the Dongfang Electric Corporation based in the central city of Chengdu.

As the final day of the weeklong congress drew to a close in the Great Hall of the People, after reporters were invited into the secretive proceedings, Hu gathered papers before him on the dais of leaders, shook hands with people in the row behind him and walked off the stage.

Sitting on the dais next to Hu was his predecessor, 86-year-old Jiang Zemin, who has emerged as a key power-broker, maneuvering his allies into the leadership at the expense of Hu. Jiang had to be helped up by attendants when congress members stood for the communist anthem, the Internationale. Afterward, Jiang turned to Hu and shook hands before being escorted offstage.

The party's 2,200-plus delegates also rubber-stamped the report Hu delivered last week committing the party to continuing a pro-economic growth agenda while retaining firm political control. Hu urged stronger measures to rein in corruption and make the government more responsive to public demands, but offered little in the way of specifics.

The next lineup of China's most powerful body, the Politburo Standing Committee, will be announced on Thursday. Though congress and Central Committee delegates have some influence over leadership decisions, most of the lineup is decided among a core group of the most powerful party members and elders.

The congress votes are "fully democratic," but "there is a degree of inevitability," actor and party delegate Song Guofeng of Liaoning province said as entered the hall Wednesday for the final session.

"We need to have continuity in leadership to carry on," Song said. "They are already in the leadership core. The stability of the party and of the county is important."

Xi and Li, part of a generation schooled at a time of more openness to the West than their predecessors, are shoo-ins for the nine-member Standing Committee. But other positions on the panel, which may be reduced to seven members, were believed up for grabs and the subject of intense jockeying ahead of the congress.

Wang Qishan was named to the party's disciplinary body in a sign he would likely be named to the top committee.

China's leadership transitions are always occasions for fractious backroom bargaining, but this one has been further complicated by scandals that have fed public cynicism that their leaders are more concerned with power and wealth than government.

In recent months, Bo Xilai, a senior politician seen as a rising star, was purged after his aide exposed that his wife murdered a British businessman. An ally of Hu's was sidelined after his son died in the crash of a Ferrari he shouldn't have been able to afford. And foreign media recently reported that relatives of Xi and outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao had amassed vast wealth. The scandals have weakened Hu, on whose watch they occurred.

Hu, who will remain president until March, took over as party boss in 2002 in the first power transfer that did not involve the death of a leader or unseating of a successor.

In a nod to Hu's 10 years in power, the congress upgraded his pet theory, the Scientific Outlook on Development, to rank alongside other key schools of thought in the party constitution, such as Marxism-Leninsim and Mao Zedong Thought. Hu's program called for more balanced growth in an attempt to distribute benefits more fairly across society.

The congress is a largely ceremonial gathering of representatives, mostly carefully selected from the national and provincial political and military elite. The real deal-making for the top positions is done behind the scenes by the true power-holders.

The newly selected Central Committee meets Thursday to select the next Politburo and from that, the Politburo Standing Committee, largely on t he advice of influential leaders.