China Communist Party opens key meeting mid-Oct

BEIJING, Aug 28 (Reuters) China's Communist Party will open a key leadership meeting on Oct. 15, state media said today, at which president and party chief Hu Jintao is expected to consolidate power through a leadership reshuffle.

The biggest political meeting in five years, the congress is expected to set the country's priorities for the coming years and may see Hu tap an heir-apparent from the ranks of a younger generation of leaders.

Almost five years into his mandate, Hu, 64, will seek to further consolidate power at the closed-door meeting -- the 17th since the party was founded -- and shake off the waning influence of predecessor Jiang Zemin, 81.

Jiang passed on the top jobs in the party, government and military to Hu since 2002, completing the country's first smooth generational leadership change since the 1949 Communist revolution.

But before retiring, he stacked the party's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee with his men. At this year's meeting, expected to last about a week, Hu will try to promote his allies to the elite group.

Whether Hu will be able to name a protege as his fifth-generation successor -- after Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang and Hu himself -- will be another barometer of how much clout he has.

Hu, the first among equals in the Standing Committee, has had to share power with peers and consult his predecessor on crucial matters in the past five years.

But Jiang has seen his influence wane, with the sacking of one protege, Shanghai's disgraced party boss Chen Liangyu, the death of another, Vice Premier and Standing Committee member Huang Ju, and the arrest of Huang's former secretary.

Jiang suffered a further political blow this month when his son and security chief were left out of the running for seats in the party's elite Central Committee, which has 198 full and 158 alternate members.

REUTERS LPB PM1734