Plates featuring the faces of Chinese leaders past and present are for sale in Beijing during the Communist Party Central Committee's sixth Plenary Session, which comes at a time when President Xi Jinping is seeking to tighten his grip on power.
(FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)
On Monday, the Communist Party of China kicked off the sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee. Over the next four days, the 205-member body will convene a series of meetings in Beijing around the general theme of "governing the Party in a strict manner" -- one of "Four Comprehensives" that President Xi Jinping in 2014 outlined as his administration's guiding philosophy. Though many of the most substantive meetings will take place behind closed doors, the coming weeks could provide important clues -- in the form of official pronouncements, rumors or personnel changes -- of their contents. In particular, they could shed light on the status of Xi's push to solidify his position as the "core" of his generation of Communist Party leaders....
