- State media reports that Politburo member Chen Xi passed on greetings to scholars from the president – signalling closed-door gathering has begun
- Agenda-setting event at seaside resort will be closely watched at a time when leadership is facing unprecedented challenges
A senior Communist Party official met the nation's leading academics and researchers at the seaside resort town of Beidaihe on Saturday, signalling the start of an annual closed-door agenda-setting meeting of China's political elites.
State news agency Xinhua reported that Chen Xi, a Politburo member and head of the party's Organisation Department, passed on greetings from President Xi Jinping to 58 top academics.
Chen said they had made outstanding contributions to the nation's development and called on them to continue working on the country's technological advancement.
Beijing authorities never formally announce the start of the Beidaihe summit, but the meeting on Saturday was an event that China watchers generally take as marking its start.
The popular resort in Hebei, located some 300km (186 miles) east of Beijing, provides a relaxed environment for party leaders " particularly the retired ones who still have influence " to exchange views on major policies. Those views are often absorbed into the formal policymaking meetings that start in October in Beijing.
Beidaihe became an important political venue when former chairman Mao Zedong, a keen swimmer, decided to set up a "summer office" there for officials, away from the heat of Beijing. Since then, some historic decisions have been made in the resort town, including to launch Mao's Great Leap Forward and his move to shell Quemoy island, the closest Kuomintang outpost to the mainland, in 1958.
The significance of the summer gathering has diminished under Xi, with analysts suggesting the Chinese president has many other channels through which to solicit party elders' opinions.
But most observers believe Beidaihe still has an important role in Chinese politics, giving Xi an opportunity to review and adjust his policies, even though there is little sign of any major challenge to his dominance.
This year's meeting will be watched particularly closely, with a host of unprecedented challenges facing the leadership. These include deteriorating China-US relations amid a potentially full-blown trade war; ongoing protests in Hong Kong, which communist leaders in Beijing may see as a challenge to Chinese sovereignty; rising pro-independence sentiment in Taiwan; and the sagging economy, which saw growth fall to a record low in the last quarter.
The gathering comes after more than a year of tit-for-tat tariffs and escalating confrontation between the world's two major rival powers in almost every area " from technology, ideology and Taiwan to regional and global security.
Growth in the Chinese economy slowed to just 6.2 per cent in the April-June period " the lowest quarterly figure since records began in March 1992. But the world's second-largest economy has been steadily slowing over the past decade, from 14.23 per cent growth in 2007 to 9.5 per cent in 2011, 7.3 per cent in 2014 and 6.6 per cent last year.
That downward trend has accelerated quarter by quarter since last year and the latest figures have raised the question of when growth may come to a halt, requiring a fundamental overhaul of the state-led economic system, and forceful action by the government.
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