BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s ruling Communist Party Congress will run for a week starting on Sunday and will amend the ruling party’s constitution, a party spokesman said on Saturday.
President Xi Jinping is poised to win a third five-year term as the party’s general secretary at the congress in Beijing and become the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
The congress will be held in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square, concluding next Saturday, party spokesman Sun Yeli told reporters.
Sun said the congress, held every five years, would make “appropriate amendments” to the party’s constitution.
“It is necessary to write the major theoretical views and major strategic ideas established in the 20th Party Congress into the party constitution,” he said, without elaborating.
Xi abolished the two-term limit for the presidency in the state constitution in 2018, paving the way for him to potentially rule indefinitely.
The congress will conclude with the introduction of the next Politburo Standing Committee, the elite body that now numbers seven and that Xi has come to dominate.
The congress comes at a tumultuous time, with Xi’s adherence to his zero-COVID policy battering the economy, while his support for Russia’s Vladimir Putin further alienates China from the West.
(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Writing by Martin Quin Pollard; Editing by Michael Perry and William Mallard)