Slave China's slavemasters hold one of their regular circle jerks.

Zaobao.com: China's Party Congress Is Likely To Elevate Younger Professionals

According to Wall Street Journal, this week's Chinese Communist Party Congress is likely to advance a shift toward a new breed of elite officials familiar with economics and business and appreciative of links with the outside world.

Yeah...Yuri Andropov loved jazz, too.

　　The party's 17th National Congress, which starts today and ends Sunday, is expected to elevate members of this younger, more broadly educated cohort into senior party positions, and lead to similar changes in posts around China.

　　The shift will let the younger generation begin having more influence on official thinking and policy making, and could transform -- although gradually -- the way Chinese officials deal with foreign businesses.

Chinese lead mining collective bosses, call your offices.

　　The congress, which happens twice a decade, will ratify a new slate for the party's most important ruling bodies, including the Political Bureau, or Politburo, with about two dozen members who meet monthly, and its powerful Standing Committee, comprising the eight most senior men in the leadership. The congress will also endorse a broad political program. It is expected to emphasize the effort of party chief Hu Jintao, China's president, to push more balanced development to address the growing wealth gap and other effects of economic growth.

Many of China's current generation of top leaders, in their 60s, were trained as engineers and grew up in the decades before China ended its global isolation and embarked on market-oriented economic overhauls in 1978. Many in the next generation were trained in law or economics and came of age in the 1980s.

　　Two of the most prominent members of the younger cohort, which collectively is known as China's "fifth generation" of leaders, are Xi Jinping , now the top party official in Shanghai, and Li Keqiang , the party chief of Liaoning, an industrial province in the northeast. Messrs. Xi and Li, both of whom hold law degrees, [Eek! Commie lawyers! - F.G.] are expected to be elevated this week to the Standing Committee, about half of whose members are expected to change. One of the two men later may be tapped to succeed current party chief Mr. Hu when his tenure ends, which is expected in 2012.Mr. Hu isn't expected to designate a successor this week and will likely continue to preside over a standing committee that rules by consensus, rather than by dictates of a single leader.

　　Younger leaders are, like their predecessors, all loyal party members who are unlikely to push radical shift in policy.The new generation's experience in law and other social sciences fits a leadership working to bolster China's political and financial systems to match its booming economy, just as the prior generation's background reflected their era's preoccupation with building dams, bridges and other infrastructure.

　　The rise of the new generation could make it easier for foreign executives to move along projects or gain access to senior officials, since the younger leaders better understand business and often have more experience dealing with foreigners. Some have spent significant time working or studying in the U.S. or elsewhere abroad.

No doubt they love jazz, too.

　　Most of the top leadership, for now, will still be from the older generation. Newcomers may be in subsidiary jobs like vice-governors or vice-ministers, or leading advisors in government or think tanks. Still, they could be poised for more senior jobs later.

Well, the commies do know a lot about tanks...

　　The international community has been demanding Beijing become more active in global diplomacy. China has faced pressure to weigh in on Myanmar, though has claimed it doesn't usually intervene in other nation's domestic politics.

　　But analysts say that will change with the influx of more foreign-trained officials.