Wang Qishan, Li Yuanchao get high approval ratings in party poll: Insider
Party poll results indicate Wang Qishan, Li Yuanchao geared for top posts, insider reveals
New details about an earlier internal party poll appear to support widely held expectations that Vice-Premier Wang Qishan and party personnel chief Li Yuanchao will be selected for top leadership posts at the upcoming party congress.
Both men, along with leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping and Vice-Premier Li Keqiang , received approval ratings of more than 95 per cent in a poll of top Communist Party leaders in May, according to a party insider.
The survey of 370 members and alternate members of the party's Central Committee is being cast by party leaders as a significant step towards reform, one that might be institutionalised in the future.
In the poll, members selected preferences for the party's decision-making Politburo, currently a 25-member body, and the Politburo Standing Committee, its inner-most cabinet ahead of the once-in-a-decade leadership change.
The insider would not give the ranking order of the four top vote-getters, but said there was just a "very small margin in differences" between them.
"The top leadership does not want the leak of such results as the vote does not determine the leadership's exact line-up, though it will be a very significant factor in the selection procedure," the source said.
A political commentator at Beijing Institute of Technology, Professor Hu Xingdou , said he was "not surprised at the high approval ratings as the four men are the most popular leaders among officials and citizens".