At the party's 17th Congress beginning on October 15, careers of top cadres will be killed off and rising stars could emerge as successors to Hu, while revamped economic and political blueprints will be approved.

All of this will happen behind closed doors at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, as the more than 2,000 delegates to the Congress will operate under a standard Chinese communist custom of strict secrecy.

Nevertheless, enough signals have been given in the lead-up to the event to know some of the broad agendas.

For Hu, the top priority is to shake off the lingering influence of his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and consolidate his own power so he can have a stronger hand in pushing forward his agenda of building a "harmonious society".

"There is little doubt that after the 17th Congress... Hu Jintao's prestige as a stable and unifying, if not flashy, team captain will have been strengthened," said Sidney Rittenberg, an American scholar who has had close ties with China since the 1940s.

To determine how much he has strengthened his hold over other top cadres, all eyes will be on the reshuffle of the nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo, which is the most powerful organ in the party.

Hu Jintao, 64, and Premier Wen Jiabao, 65, are certainties to remain but what happens with the other positions has been the subject of fierce speculation, particularly the fate of those seen to be aligned with Jiang.

The leadership reshuffle will also be closely watched to see who, if anyone, emerges as the most likely candidate to assume the party's top post from Hu at the next Congress in 2012, and hence become communist China's fifth president.

In this regard, Li Keqiang, the 52-year-old party boss of the northeastern province of Liaoning and ally of Hu, is being seen as a front-runner to be promoted into the Politburo Standing Committee.

Another is Xi Jinping, 54, the party chief of Shanghai and one of China's so-called "princelings", the sons of former communist heavyweights who can thank their pedigree for at least some of their own political status.

"It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that Li Keqiang and Xi Jinping will get into the Politburo Standing Committee," Hong Kong-based veteran China watcher Willy Lam said.

The reshuffle will be revealed when the new Standing Committee walks out on stage on the final day of the Congress, which is expected to last one week although no timeframe has been announced.

The Congress will equally be closely watched to see which direction Hu wants to take China's 1.3 billion people over the next five years.

The official Xinhua news agency reported last month that the party's charter would be amended to include Hu's ideology of advancing "scientific development".

This has been widely interpreted as an attempt to correct many of the imbalances that have accompanied China's historic economic development of the past three decades, and thus temper Jiang's focus on breakneck growth.

Narrowing the wealth gap between urban and rural areas, and placing more emphasis on protecting the environment are two of the principle components of "scientific development".

And while major democratic reforms are not on the cards, Hu is expected to continue pushing ahead with his efforts to make cadres more accountable, particularly provincial authorities who prefer not to take orders from Beijing.

Outside of the Great Hall of the People, security will be tight with critics of the regime detained or placed under house arrest, as is traditionally the case for major communist events in China.

"All police should... closely monitor and strike hard on overseas and domestic hostile forces, ethnic splittists, religious extremists and violent terrorists," Police Minister Zhou Yongkang said last month in calling for a pre-Congress security crackdown.

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