China's young leaders wait in the wings

BEIJING, Oct 10 (Reuters) More open, better educated and less ideological -- China's next crop of national leaders could change the face of the world's most populous country.

But political reform under the so-called ''fifth generation'' is likely to be cautious, and their as cent to replace the ruling generation of President Hu Jintao will not necessarily bring democracy, analysts said.

While barely known in the outside world, Li Keqiang, Xi Jinping, Zhao Leji and Bo Xilai could be in the political spotlight in coming months, as the ruling Communist Party prepares for a key congress next year that is likely to anoint potential successors to Hu and his generation.

A Communist Party Central Committee meeting that opened in Beijing on Sunday may see promotions for some of them -- cadres in their 40s or early 50s who have been cutting their teeth in the provinces or in ministries.

''They largely started to emerge during the reform era, and most of them were born after 1949,'' said Cheng Li, a Chinese politics expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

''In my view, this generation largely will politically be much bolder and even less ideological.'' The Central Committee meeting marks the start of a year of political jockeying before the 17th Party Congress.

Last month's sacking of Shanghai party boss Chen Liangyu for corruption has left at least one key post open. Observers are waiting to see whether Hu elevates one of the younger generation at the meeting, which runs until tomorrow.

That could pave the way for one of them to move higher at the congress and then take over the ultimate reins of power in 2012, when Hu will be readying for retirement.

FIFTH GENERATION The generations of former paramount leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were shaped by decades of war and revolution; Jiang Zemin's by the Soviet-inspired industrial drive of the 1950s. The fourth generation's conservative outlook was moulded by the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Hu graduated from Tsinghua University in 1965, a year before the Cultural Revolution began, with a degree in hydroelectric engineering.

Avoiding the bloody struggles that shook Beijing's universities, he was sent to work as a engineer in the impoverished northwestern province of Gansu.

The fifth generation, by contrast, entered politics in the relatively liberal and politically stable period after Deng launched market-oriented reforms in the 1980s.

They could start making the first tentative steps towards democracy in China, analysts say.

''It's possible they could move towards more democracy, if they saw it as politically expedient. The ideology of communism is not as strong as it once was,'' said Bi Jianhai, a Chinese leadership expert at National University of Singapore's East Asian Institute.

Any steps are likely to be very cautious. The fifth generation still remembers the Cultural Revolution chaos and fears that a sudden move to democracy could spark a repetition.

''I would say they'll take the gradualist approach. They will be very, very cautious. I think they probably will experiment at grassroots levels,'' said Zhiyue Bo, a China scholar at St John Fisher College in New York.

''I would not expect them to start anything very dramatic.'' REUTERS LL BD0950