Xi Jinping, though powerful, not in league of Mao, Deng

CHINA'S leader, Xi Jinping, has been given an important new title that has been unused for the last 14 years in an elevation of his status so that he is now clearly on a higher level than that occupied by his predecessor, Hu Jintao.

Mr Xi is now China's "core" leader. As a communiqué issued at the end of a four-day session of several hundred party leaders last week said, all party members should "closely unite around the Communist Party of China Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core".

The concept of a "core" leader was not used in the first 40 years of the People's Republic of China. It was introduced by Deng Xiaoping in 1989, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square military crackdown, when he anointed Jiang Zemin as new party leader. To shore up the little known Mr Jiang's position as the new leader, Mr Deng tried to put the new man on the same level as Mao Zedong and Mr Deng himself.