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President Xi Jinping on Sunday kicked-off the 20th congress of China’s ruling Communist Party, a week-long event where he is widely expected to win a third leadership term and cement his place as the country’s most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong.
The gathering of roughly 2,300 delegates from around the country began in the vast Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tiananmen Square amid tight security and under blue skies after several smoggy days in the Chinese capital.
Xi, 69, entered the auditorium just before 10 a.m. (0200 GMT) and began a speech that was expected to review the party’s achievements and outline priorities for the coming years.
In his decade in power, Xi has set China on an increasingly authoritarian path that has prioritized security, state control of the economy in the name of “common prosperity”, a more assertive diplomacy, a stronger military and intensifying pressure to seize Taiwan.
