The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is the highest authority within the Communist Party of China between Party Congresses. In Chinese the committee is sometimes known as the three middle because there are three middles in the Chinese name of the committee. The Central Committee has about 300 members and nominally appoints the Politburo of the Communist Party of China.
While the Central Committee does not exercise authority as a corporate body in the same way that a legislature would, it is an important body in that it contains the leading figures of the party, state, and army. The Central Committee is larger and has a somewhat more diverse ideological spectrum than the Politburo.
Some analysts have suggested that as part of his effort to increase intra-party democracy that Hu Jintao intends to increase the power held by the Central Committee. Two significant facts taken by Hu has been the cancelling of the traditional August leadership conference at Beidaihe, and the comparative large amount of public coverage given to the plenary Central Committee meeting in October 2003.
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