The admission of a few prominent entrepreneurs to the central committee of the Communist Party was one of the proposals agreed at a meeting of national leaders in Beidaihe in August for the agenda of the party congress, due to start on November 8, the Financial Times said, quoting unnamed official sources. The sources did not reveal whether the business leaders would be full or alternate members of the committee, but did say that they were likely to be famous people who had built up their companies from scratch.
The meeting also agreed that President Jiang Zemin's political philosophy of 'the three represents' should be written into the party's constitution, underpinning its move to further economic reform in the future.