Chinese President Hu Jintao will give a Communist Party council some say in electing the Party's new core leadership in a breakthrough that could play against unpopular officials linked to his predecessor.
This weekend China's five-yearly Communist Party Congress elects a new Central Committee - a council of about 200 full members who meet once or twice a year to discuss major decisions. The more than 2,200 Congress delegates are officials and carefully vetted grassroots Party members who rarely buck at top-down control at the largely ritualistic gathering.
But in an effort to bolster leaders' authority, past Congresses have allotted slightly more candidates than seats on the Central Committee, and unpopular officials have occasionally failed to win enough votes. Three independent sources told Reuters that Hu will this time also allow the Central Committee itself to choose among slightly more candidates than seats when it in turn votes in the two dozen or more members of the Politburo and the nine-seat Politburo Standing Committee - the innermost rings of power.
In the secretive, often delicate manoeuvring of Chinese politics, the procedural shift could give Hu a shot of greater legitimacy as he enters five more years in charge of the world's fourth-largest economy.
"Hu knows he's not a Deng," said one source, referring to Deng Xiaoping, the late reformist leader who used his prestige to cower rivals and subordinates. "If you're not a Deng, you can't just call the shots on your own ... With an expanded vote, Hu can say more strongly that he speaks for the Party, not just himself."
The three sources, all involved or close to Congress proceedings, all spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing punishment for talking to foreign journalists.
One of them said the vote was likely to provide for just two or so more candidates than seats on the Politburo, expected to expand to about 30 members from two dozen now. On Friday, Congress delegates continued discussing a "preliminary list" of candidates for the Central Committee, state media reported.