18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party

The 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing from 8 to 14 November 2012. The National Congress is the highest organ of the party, and is stipulated to be held every five years. The conference had 2,268 delegates.

The CCP Congress endorsed the amendments to the CCP constitution, membership list of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and elected the 18th Central Committee of the CCP. The day after the closing of the Congress, the first plenary session was held at which the Central Committee approved the composition of the Secretariat, and soon after, the members of the Politburo and its Standing Committee, the party's most powerful decision-making body. Xi Jinping succeeded Hu Jintao as CCP general secretary after the Congress. It was followed by the 19th National Congress of the CCP in 2017.

Due to term limits and age restrictions, seven of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee retired after the Congress, and the number of Politburo Standing Committee seats reduced was from nine to seven. The seven PSC members elected after the Congress were Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli. Five of these were identified as associates or having benefited from the patronage of former CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin, who reportedly exerted considerable influence in shaping the composition of the new Standing Committee. Only Li Keqiang and Liu Yunshan were considered to be members of the tuanpai.