Meeting with China’s top academics marks the start of annual Beidaihe summit
- 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.
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.
