President Xi Jinping of China looks like he is going to labelled as the "core" of their Communist Party

  • Apparently being the 'core' is a big deal there
  • Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping scored the 'core' designation, but former president, Hu Jintao, missed out.

The semantic change ... -- something analysts said could happen as soon as next month's National People's Congress in Beijing -- could free Xi's hand to help shape the party's leadership during a twice-a-decade reshuffle next year.

"If all this is really pointing to the declaration of Xi as the 'core' leader, then it suggests there might be some big changes at the 19th Party Congress," said Joseph Fewsmith, a political science professor at Boston University who studies China's elite politics and wrote "The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China". The move would "make the 19th Party Congress even more critical in establishing the party leadership."

Bloomberg for more

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Huh.

There you go. I thought it was just to make life easier for cartoonists - you know, "rotten to the core" and all that. But, no.