China's Communist Party Convenes

China's Communist Party Congress convened amid tight security Friday, drawing 2,000 delegates together on fabled Tiananmen Square to steer the nation through breakneck changes and introduce a new generation of leaders who inherit a society in the throes of change.

The National Party Congress, held once every five years, was called to order at 9 a.m. (0100 GMT) sharp under a giant hammer and sickle in the Great Hall of the People.

It convenes in a particularly challenging era for China — one of convulsive change and the search for a political system that will stimulate enough economic growth to maintain stability.

"Holding high the important banner of Deng Xiaoping theory, we march forward and grow with the changing times as we head toward the future," said Jiang Zemin, China's president and the party general secretary.

This congress is widely expected to herald Jiang's retirement. Most expect Jiang, 76, to be succeeded as Communist Party chief by Hu Jintao, 59, who is widely assumed to also be replacing Jiang as president next year.

Jiang strode into the congress hall ahead of a column of leaders. Four behind him, in the usual stringent order of Chinese politics, was Hu.

Security on the streets of Beijing was heavy, with agents deployed every 20 feet (6 meters) — including uniformed police and plainclothes officers from at least a half-dozen different security agencies. Red flags flew over buildings on Changan Avenue, the broad boulevard that runs across Tiananmen Square.

The Great Hall of the People crackled with activity. Delegates arrived in caravans of tour buses, including large groups of uniformed military officers in full winter dress. Minority delegates, including Tibetans and Mongolians, wore ethnic garb and drank piping-hot cups of tea.

A red banner hanging from a balcony over the main hall said: "Warmly celebrate the victorious opening to the Chinese Communist Party's 16th National Congress." State television carried the event live, introducing it with the faithful marching and singing, "Without the Communist Party, there is no new China."

But while the theme was the future, ghosts of China's past were very much in evidence.

"Let us begin by mourning for the dead revolutionaries such as Mao Zedong," Li Peng, head of China's legislature, said. Moments later, the Chinese national anthem echoed through the hall.

Despite the scarlet-saturated pageantry, secrecy has prevailed. Though state-run media have taken a valedictory tone in recent weeks about Jiang and his generation, there has been no open discussion about the details of succession — or, indeed, any talk of succession at all.

People's Daily, the party newspaper, on Friday called the meeting "a very important congress convened at a time when China has entered a new development stage of building a society in an all-round way in which the people can lead a fairly comfortable life and accelerating the socialist modernization drive."

Party officials have pledged to modernize once-doctrinaire ideology to keep pace with a fast-changing, increasingly capitalist society.

"China has entered into a new phase of development, in which we are to build a well-to-do society," Ji Bingxuan, spokesman for the congress, said Thursday.

Ji indicated that a key theme of the congress would be Jiang's personal campaign — known awkwardly as the "Three Represents" — to bring entrepreneurs into the party and to amend its constitution to give them a formal role.

"We will ... comprehensively implement the important thought of `Three Represents,"' Ji said at a news conference.

Jiang was picked to lead the party in 1989 by then-supreme leader Deng, who launched the country's economic reforms a decade earlier after the 1976 death of Mao Zedong, the founder of communist China.

Jiang's campaign is aimed at keeping a party that still calls itself the "vanguard of the working class" in control of a society where reform has unleashed dizzying changes. Some people have gotten rich, but many face upheaval as state industry sheds jobs in an attempt to compete.

Ji defended the decision to embrace entrepreneurs, saying they would serve the party — not weaken its revolutionary zeal.

"Workers, peasants, intellectuals, our men and women in uniform ... are still the backbone force of the Communist Party," he said. "This will further increase the influence and cohesion of the Communist Party throughout society."

Preparations for the congress have included sweeping efforts to tighten security in the capital and to block any demonstrations. Hotels in Beijing have been ordered not to accept Tibetans or Muslim Uighurs from the restive Chinese northwest as guests, according to employees contacted at four hotels.

Nevertheless, activists used the event to appeal for political change.

A group of 192 dissidents inside China, in an open letter this week, urged delegates to release political prisoners and expand direct elections.

"Improvements in economic development cannot cover up more and more obvious problems of deep social peril," they said.

Ji, the congress spokesman, stressed what he called the "socialist democratic" qualities of the meeting. He said its 2,114 delegates had been chosen by party members through competitive elections and secret ballots.