BEIJING, Nov 14: China made sweeping changes to its leadership on Thursday as President Jiang Zemin and almost all the country’s other communist bosses began handing over power to a younger generation.

With six of the nation’s top seven leaders standing down from their posts in the ruling Communist Party, the stage is now set for 59-year-old Vice President Hu Jintao to take control of the world’s most populous nation.

Jiang, 76, immediately hailed the changeover at the party’s just- ended 16th Congress in Beijing.

“The Central Committee for the new term has been elected at the Congress, thus ensuring the smooth succession of the new collective at the central leadership of the party to the previous one,” he said at a lavish Soviet-style closing session.

The long-rumoured clear-out at the congress also sees Premier Zhu Rongji and parliamentary head Li Peng, both 74, step down from their party posts.

It is the first leadership change since the Communist Party took power in 1949 not to involve a death or an internal party coup.

However, many questions remain, chiefly over Jiang’s widely assumed ambition to wield power from behind the scenes.—AFP