What Seating Says About Power Around Xi at China’s NPC Meeting
- Xi’s former and new allies sit alongside at center of rostrum
- Politburo becomes all-men’s club with female member departing
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Where you sit can often tell your status in the office hierarchy. It’s no different at the National People’s Congress, where Xi Jinping’s allies are all crammed around the Chinese leader.
When the country’s rubber-stamp legislature kicked off its annual session on Sunday, the cavernous Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square was packed with the country’s political elites. Only the rostrum is slightly more crowded this year, as the ongoing congress will ring out the old guard and bring in a new slate of senior leaders packed with loyalists to Xi.