Asia, Communist Party | featured news

...Just as Vice President Xi Jinping, 59, was named at the just-ended Communist Party Congress to replace President Hu Jintao, someone in the next generation of officials will likely replace Xi 10 years from now. And leading the pack, according to some party insiders and experts, is a man widely known as “Little Hu.”

China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, impressed many people with a plain-spoken promise to address problems in the country’s ruling party on Thursday, but his new leadership team offered few clues as to a clear shift in direction.

President Hu Jintao gave his final speech as head of China’s Communist Party on Wednesday, paving the way for a new generation of leaders that will be unveiled Thursday morning.

China is set to promote two rising stars and possible future national leaders at a Communist Party congress opening next week, one taking the old job of disgraced former high-flyer Bo Xilai in the country's biggest metropolis, sources said.

China's communist leadership expelled Bo Xilai from the ruling party Friday and sought to bury him with charges ranging from corruption to sexual affairs, aiming to sweep away their most damaging scandal in decades while finally scheduling their long-awaited leadership transition for November.

With still no sign of China’s designated new leader, Xi Jinping, who has not been seen in public since Sept. 1, many insiders and well-connected analysts say the Chinese political ship is adrift, with factions jockeying to shape an impending Communist Party conclave.

China will open the murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Communist Party Politburo member Bo Xilai, on August 9, two sources said on Friday, a case at the center of a scandal that has rocked the government and could bring Gu the death penalty.

Tens of thousands of protesters paraded through Hong Kong on Sunday, waving placards denouncing “brainwashing” by China’s Communist Party and calling for the scrapping of plans for “national education” courses in local schools. The protest, organized by teachers, parents and student groups as well as local political organizations hostile to Beijing’s one-party system, demonstrated deep opposition to the introduction of classes that aim to boost knowledge of and attachment to China in this freewheeling former British colony of 7.2 million.

Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi sued a Hong Kong newspaper after it claimed she earned millions of dollars from having sex with top Communist Party leaders... The newspaper alleged she earned around $110 million from prostituting herself.

China has moved quickly to cast the downfall of one of the country's top politicians as a simple case of legal wrongdoing. Bo Xilai has been stripped of his position in the Communist party's politburo because of his connection with the suspected murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.