University lecturers are topping up earnings by helping students cheat, review suggests - Telegraph

University lecturers are topping up earnings by helping students cheat, review suggests

Academic staff and lecturers are among those paid by “essay mill” companies

Camilla Turner, education editor

7 OCTOBER 2017 • 9:30PM

University lecturers are topping up their earnings by helping students cheat in their degree, a government-backed review will suggest.

The inquiry was commissioned by ministers amid concerns that universities are gripped by an epidemic of so-called “essay mills”, which sell essays, coursework or exam answers to students.

Institutions which repeatedly turn a blind eye to cheating could be stripped of their powers to award degrees by the Government’s new regulator, the Office for Students (OFS), The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Academic staff and lecturers are among those paid by “essay mill” companies to complete work for students, the report by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), the UK's independent quality body for higher education, is expected to find.

“These 'essay mill' companies prey on vulnerable academics as well as students,” said Douglas Blackstock, chief executive of the QAA.

“These are hard-pressed research assistants or lecturers, topping up their earnings. Many companies claim they get genuine academics to write their material. To make their businesses viable, they need to attract people who know enough about the subject.

“If a university was to find a member of staff was writing an essay for [their students] we would think that is a serious issue.”

The report will recommend that universities add an explicit clause into academic staff contracts to explain that “assisting a student to commit an academic offence, or ignoring evidence of misconduct, would be a cause for a staff disciplinary investigation”.

Later this month the OFS will unveil a series of conditions for registration, which institutions will have to meet if they want to retain their status as a university.

Ability to secure academic standards is likely to be a condition for registration

Ability to secure academic standards is likely to be a condition for registration CREDIT: CHRIS ISON

Mr Blackstock told The Sunday Telegraph that the ability to secure academic standards is likely to be a condition for registration. “In a really serious failing of academic standards, there will be significant consequences. [The OFS] allows for the removal of degree awarding powers,” he said.

He said that universities must have appropriate sanctions in place to tackle “contract cheating”, and if they fail to address the issue “there have to be consequences”. “Universities have a responsibility for academic standards,” he said.

“There are expectations that they secure standards of their degrees.” Mr Blackstock warned that failing to confront fraudulent university work not only undermines academic standards, but is also a matter of public safety when graduates enter the jobs market.

“This is where we want to work with the professionals,” he said. “You wouldn't want a lawyer representing you in a court case [if they had not passed their Law degree on their own].

“If it it was a medical related profession or something that [impacted on] public safety - that is such a dangerous thing.”

In a really serious failing of academic standards, there will be significant consequences

Douglas Blackstock, QAA chief executive

He said if the issue is not addressed, there are "significant consequences" for institutions, for students and academics, and for the public. The QAA has previously found the use of essay mills was “rife” among university students, with previous reports suggesting that sixth-form pupils also use such methods.

Earlier this year, this newspaper revealed that more than 20,000 students enrolled at British universities are paying up to £6,750 for bespoke essays in order to obtain degrees.

The number of students using “essay mill” sites, which can charge over £6,500 for a PhD dissertation, has rocketed over the last five years.

While universities already use complex anti-plagiarism software to detect the copying of academic texts, the process of contract cheating - where students submit paid-for essays as their own original work - means that examiners and markers are powerless to prevent foul play.

The QAA’s guidance for universities is due to be published on Monday, in a report titled “Contracting to cheat in higher education: how to address contract cheating, the use of third party services and essay mills”.

Universities minister Jo Johnson said he welcomes the guidance from QAA and expects the OFS to “ensure that the sector implements strong policies and sanctions to address this important issue in the most robust way possible”.

Mattis Discloses Part of Afghanistan Battle Plan, but It Hasn’t Yet Been Carried Out - New York Times

Mattis Discloses Part of Afghanistan Battle Plan, but It Hasn’t Yet Been Carried Out

By THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFFOCT. 6, 2017

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis testified Tuesday before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Credit Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, normally reluctant to speak publicly about American troops deployed around the globe, took a different tack this week on Capitol Hill.

Pressed by lawmakers, including Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, about the Pentagon’s failure to provide more details about the Afghanistan war plan, Mr. Mattis divulged new information about more aggressive rules of engagement there.

But the changes he described have yet to be issued as orders to troops in the field, according to American service members and officials in Afghanistan. With the new rules caught in bureaucratic limbo, Mr. Mattis effectively telegraphed the military’s plans to the Taliban before they could be put into action.

Why Mr. Mattis chose to publicly discuss the rules of engagement — parameters that are classified to ensure the enemy cannot take advantage of their limitations — is unclear. The Pentagon did not deny that the changes had yet to go into effect, but a spokesman, Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, said he strongly disagreed “that the secretary said anything in public that would place forces on the ground at risk, or help the enemy.”

Mr. Mattis’s decision to talk about the secretive guidelines highlights the difficult position he is in: wedged between lawmakers’ demands for more transparency while trying to articulate how the United States is committed to the country’s longest-running war, one the public has largely dismissed.

The disclosure signaled to Taliban fighters that some of their well-established sanctuaries are no longer safe and that they will need to change how they move around the battlefield to avoid American bombs. It also takes away the element of surprise, a core aspect of any battle plan.

Battlefield commanders in Afghanistan have long publicly discussed the need to take more aggressive measures as the Taliban have gained ground since the American troop drawdown in 2014. But current and retired military officers expressed surprise that Mr. Mattis, himself a retired Marine field commander, went so far.

“This is an odd break from someone who is usually very selective of information divulged about the war,” said Jason Dempsey, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and veteran Army infantry officer who was deployed twice to Afghanistan.

Mr. Mattis’s shift will move the military away from Obama-era rules that allow American forces to strike the Taliban if they are shooting at or otherwise threatening American or Afghan forces. Instead, under the changes, American aircraft could seek out and attack militants based simply on their affiliation to the group.

“You see some of the results of releasing our military from, for example, a proximity requirement — how close was the enemy to the Afghan or the U.S.-advised Special Forces,” Mr. Mattis said on Tuesday in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “That is no longer the case, for example. So these kind of restrictions that did not allow us to employ the air power fully have been removed, yes.”

He made similar remarks testifying that afternoon in front of the House Armed Services Committee.

The changes are similar to the rules of engagement governing the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq as well as in eastern Afghanistan, where the extremist group has been active for the past two years.

They also hark back to the height of the war in Afghanistan, when about 100,000 American troops were fanned out across the country and intelligence was regularly harvested in an effort to produce more targets for fleets of American aircraft and hundreds of Special Operations forces.

David W. Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general, who led the war effort in Afghanistan for almost two years, said the changes probably indicate that the American military is shifting from a largely defensive war and “getting off its hands and much more involved in combat operations.”

Indeed, Mr. Mattis’s push to implement more aggressive rules of engagement coincides with his decision to place American troops closer to the fighting, which he stresses will be in only an advisory role. It is also the latest move in a string of military decisions by the Trump administration to give more decision-making authority to troops at lower levels.

Mr. Mattis’s comments also provided some clarity about a remark made last month by President Trump in front of the United Nations General Assembly. During a speech, Mr. Trump said that he had “totally changed” the rules of engagement against the Taliban and terrorist groups in Afghanistan as part of his new strategy for South Asia.

An American military official in Afghanistan said that Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the top American commander in the country, had requested the new rules, and that they were expected to be in effect soon. But the official acknowledged that changes were still being worked out. He said that Mr. Mattis chose an unconventional venue to describe them and added that they are usually never discussed.

“One of the things that is interesting to me is why this didn’t go into a closed hearing,” Mr. Barno said of Mr. Mattis’s decision to talk about the rules of engagement. “It’s a bit odd to me they didn’t go down that route to paint the picture more clearly.”

Later during the hearing, Mr. Mattis was pressed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, about another issue: whether he would be “honest with the American people about the numbers of troops you are sending over and what their missions will be.”

Mr. Mattis replied, “No, ma’am, if it involves telling the enemy something that will help them.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Charles J. Sykes: Where the Right Went Wrong - TIME

Charles J. Sykes: Where the Right Went Wrong

Charles J. Sykes

Oct 06, 2017

Sykes, a former talk-radio host, is the author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.

Among the many ironies of the conservative implosion was how the Right became what it had once mocked. In 2008, conservatives ridiculed the Left for its adulation of Barack Obama, only to succumb to their own cult of personality eight years later. For years, they scoffed at what Rush Limbaugh called the “low information voters,” only to find out that the conservative base was (as one pundit put it) itself decidedly postliterate.

Polls suggested that as many as seven in ten Republicans doubted Obama’s birth in the United States. A majority thought he was a secret Muslim. This is not to say that the Right had a monopoly on voter ignorance. Surveys have found that only about one third of Americans can even name the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judiciary). As Ilya Somin, a professor at the George Mason University School of Law, has observed, the problem is not that such knowledge is absolutely essential, it is that “anyone who follows politics even moderately closely is likely to know them.”

As its coverage of the last campaign demonstrated, the mainstream media is complicit in dumbing down the electorate. As recently as 2008, the nightly news programs on the three major networks devoted a grand total of less than four hours of airtime over an entire year to reporting on actual issues (as opposed to candidate speeches or political horse race coverage). By 2016, the Tyndall Report, which monitors networks’ news costs, estimated issue coverage for the year had fallen to just 36 minutes.

The problem here is obvious: An ignorant electorate is not likely to hold ignorant politicians to account.

Even before 2016, some critics accused the GOP of self-consciously dumbing itself down. In Too Dumb to Fail, Matt Lewis charged that conservatism had become “more personal and less principled — more flippant and less thoughtful. It became mean. It became lazy.” As conservatives cultivated their everyman anti-intellectualism, Lewis said, many “deliberately shun erudition, academic excellence, experience, sagaciousness, and expertise in politics.” It had become the party of Sarah Palin . . . and Donald Trump.

There was also a time — before the Age of Twitter — when statesmen actually read books. “The American Founders could have a conversation among themselves,” National Review’s Kevin Williamson wrote, “because they had in the main all consumed the same library of Greek and Roman classics (in the original or in translation), British and Continental literature ranging from fiction to political economy, legal literature, and the like.” This did not lead to uniformity of opinion. “What it ensured was literate and enlightened argument,” noted Williamson. “From the man of many books to the man of one book, we devolved very quickly to the man of one sentence, the paragraph being too demanding and unwieldy a form.”

Television personality Tomi Lahren seemed to embody the unapologetic anti-intellectualism of the new generation of conservative media “thought leaders.” When the 24-year-old Lahren was profiled by the New York Times, she was described as “young, vocal and the right’s rising media star.” But in an interview on The Jamie Weinstein Show podcast, she admitted that she was no Edmund Burke:

I don’t like to read long books. I like to read news. So I couldn’t tell you that there was a book that I read that changed my life. More so, I love to read . . . but I have a very short attention span, so sitting down with a book is very difficult for me.

Her attitude toward reading was, unfortunately, shared by the 45th president of the United States, who has admitted that he has not read any biographies of former presidents. He has no time to read books, he told the Washington Post. “I never have. I’m always busy doing a lot. Now I’m more busy, I guess, than ever before.”

St. Martin's Press

Throughout the campaign there were strained attempts to compare Trump to Ronald Reagan. But although the media often portrayed the Gipper as an amiable dunce, the discovery of the papers that were published in the book Reagan, In His Own Hand forced historians to revise their views of the 40th president. Reagan wrote out many of his radio commentaries and newspaper articles, as well as many of his own speeches. He wrote poetry, short stories, and letters. Trump, in his own hand, writes 140-character tweets.

At one time, the Left had a monopoly not merely of the media and academia, but also of the world of policy think tanks. But the playing field was changed by the development of an intellectual infrastructure — including The Heritage Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute — that has redefined what was possible for conservatism. It became possible to challenge the Left on policy grounds, win the war of ideas, and win elections.

Throughout 2015–2016, the struggle in the GOP was often characterized as a contest between “outsiders” and the “establishment” or the “elites.” But this was lazy punditry, and missed a larger (and more troubling) development.

There was, of course, justifiable disillusionment with the Washington, D.C., insider/elite who have been co-opted by the beltway culture, but there was something else going on as well: an assault on intellectual traditions of conservative civility. This went beyond candidate Trump’s serial insults of conservatives — Charles Krauthammer was a dummy/loser/clown; George Will was “dopey”; Bill Kristol had “lost all respect”; Rich Lowry was the “worst”; and so on.

Trump’s targets were unusual because they were not politicians or officeholders. But all of them were heirs to the conservative intellectual tradition and a culture that had once placed a value on thoughtfulness, experience, intelligence, and a coherent philosophy of man and his relationship to the state. What we were seeing was, in effect, a repudiation of the conservative mind.

How Tillerson Is Trying to Save the Iran Deal From His Boss - Intelligencer ( New York Magazine )

How Tillerson Is Trying to Save the Iran Deal From His Boss

By

Jonah Shepp

Guess who would have to negotiate Trump’s theoretical “better deal” with Iran?

Rex Tillerson is unlikely to go down in history as one of our better secretaries of State. In the past few months, he has been the subject of not one but two Politico Magazine headlines accusing him of ruining the State Department by driving out its best diplomatic talent, whether through his corporate-style restructuring of the department or through the daily indignity of working as career public servants and nonpartisan experts in an administration that disdains both.

Yet if Tillerson quits or is fired before the end of the Trump administration, it will not be on account of those complaints from Obama-era diplomats. Rather, it will be because, as Rich Lowry puts it, “In a nationalist administration, he is a man without a country” — or more simply, because he doesn’t agree with the president about foreign policy and refuses to follow bad orders. There are only so many times a person can be undercut by their boss, whom they openly consider a moron, while trying to do their job, before they walk away.

As Donald Trump attempts to kill the Iran nuclear deal without getting any blood on his suit, the tensions between Tillerson and Trump have made themselves felt again. Earlier this week, CNN reported that Tillerson was working with some lawmakers to try to head off Trump’s plan to decertify the deal by amending its implementing legislation and removing the requirement that the president recertify it every three months.

At the moment, it looks like that effort either has already failed or will do so imminently, but the way a senior administration official described Tillerson’s take on the problem says a lot about the circumstances under which the former Exxon CEO is trying to work. “Tillerson has said the problem with the JCPOA is not the JCPOA,” the official told CNN, using the acronym for the deal’s official title, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “It’s the legislation. Every 90 days the president must certify and it creates a political crisis.”

During the Obama administration, this was not a problem, as the president was unlikely to cancel his own signature foreign-policy achievement before it had a chance to work. But now that we have a president who rode into office threatening to tear the deal up, the recertification process is a massive liability. In other words, the problem with the JCPOA is not the JCPOA: It’s Donald Trump.

In the words of CNN’s anonymous source, the virtue of ending this quarterly political crisis caused by Trump’s will-he-or-won’t-he game is that it would allow our diplomatic and national security corps to “get back to work on dealing with everything else that is a problem with Iran.” Tillerson’s proposal was to have the administration report to Congress about Iran’s allegedly aggressive behavior in general and American efforts to counter it, rather than specifically certifying compliance with the JCPOA itself. This would give Trump an opening to routinely denounce Iran’s ballistic missile tests, or its support for militias in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, without putting the nuclear deal in jeopardy and forcing Tillerson’s staff to constantly play defense.

In that regard, Tillerson seems to have a better handle than his boss does on what the point of the deal is in the first place. The Obama administration had no illusions about getting Iran to scuttle its nuclear ambitions once and for all (a politically unfeasible task for Tehran even if the government wanted to do it). Thus, the deal was never designed to do that. Instead, it was meant to give the U.S. and our allies the time, breathing room, and modicum of rapport to engage Iran diplomatically in a non-crisis environment. It was the start of a process, not a quick fix.

But this kind of long-term, trust-building diplomacy is anathema to Trump. In his doctrine, any deal in which he doesn’t “win” is worse than no deal at all, so the Iran agreement is a disaster because it does not compel Iran to give in completely and immediately to the demands of the United States. Trump apparently thinks that by throwing relations with Iran back into crisis mode, he can succeed where previous administrations failed at bullying Iran into submission.

The secretary of State would by definition be responsible for securing Trump’s hypothetical “better deal”; Tillerson would prefer not to be in that impossible position. He’d clearly prefer to keep the existing agreement in place, even if he doesn’t much like it, and attempt to make progress toward more achievable goals with Iran. Tillerson’s habit of running the State Department like an underperforming business division may be damaging U.S. diplomacy in the long run, but at least he knows how deals with foreign adversaries actually work.

Tillerson’s attempts to outmaneuver his boss on Iran and North Korea may also help explain why he hasn’t rage-quit his cabinet position yet despite having ample cause to do so. If he sees his role as a check on the president’s worst ideas and impulses, he might feel compelled to stick around as long as possible to keep catastrophe at bay. Perhaps Tillerson has calculated that it’s better to hang onto a job he never wanted and in which he has no hope of achieving great things than to resign and run the risk of being replaced by a nationalist lunatic in the Sebastian Gorka mold.

Apparently Trump can deny birth control to millions of American women – but can’t do a thing about guns - Independent

Apparently Trump can deny birth control to millions of American women – but can’t do a thing about guns

Republican Congressman Tim Murphy was a champion of restricting access to abortion – then he asked his mistress to get one. The hypocrisy is dumbfounding

It’s not unusual for dinners with friends to dissolve into seances of despair about Donald Trump and America’s Republican leaders. The intensity of these sessions varies depending on the day’s news. It is a sort of graph with all the obvious spikes of disapproval: the firing of Comey, the withdrawal from the Paris accord, the threats to obliterate an entire nation. And so on.

No night, I don’t think, was angrier than one last week. At the table, we were American, English, Guatemalan, Mexican and Colombian, none of us, to be clear, conservatively inclined. No Trumpets in the room, so we were free to let off steam. The only question was where to begin.

First, disgust at Trump showing up in Puerto Rico and lobbing rolls of paper towel into the crowd, not surprising perhaps given the number of Spanish-speakers present, feeling raw on the topic. The Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, whom I’d interviewed on the island on Monday, deemed the display “terrible and degrading”. We shared some other choice adjectives.

A few among us had caught a much fresher nugget of news, this one about Tim Murphy, a veteran Republican member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, best known as a leader of efforts further to restrict the options of women in America to seek an abortion. Earlier in the week, he had voted for something called the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which “would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy”.

The congressman had just resigned. Not because he’d been found out maintaining a mistress back in Pittsburgh, but because a local newspaper had revealed that earlier this year he urged her to get an abortion when she believed herself pregnant (though it turned out she wasn’t). Such rank hypocrisy may not surprise but it is still hard to fathom. You may be reminded of Larry Craig, the former US Senator from Idaho, who in 2006 voted yes on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. The following year he pleaded guilty to soliciting sex in an airport gents.

Puerto Rico Mayor rebukes Trump for calling her nasty by wearing 'Nasty' t-shirt on TV

That we segued to guns and the slaying of 58 concert-goers in Las Vegas by a 64-year-old man holed up on the 32nd floor of a hotel surrounded by an armory of deadly weapons might at first seem odd. But before we’d arrived, one of us had shared something on social media that had gone viral and had caught her attention. It was originally posted by Gloria Steinem, the 83-year-old dean of American feminism, though there is some mystery as to who actually penned it.

It is a call for all the restrictions that various states, all Republican controlled, have imposed or are seeking to impose on women opting to terminate their pregnancies to be replicated for any person looking to buy a gun. The war on women goes on: on Friday the Trump administration issued a new directive allowing employers to remove coverage for birth control from the health insurance they give them. Potentially, hundreds of thousands of women going forward will no longer have access to birth control options free of charge, a draconian step that makes the Steinem post yet more pertinent. You may have seen it already, including on these pages.

US President Donald Trump tosses rolls of paper towels to people at a hurricane relief distribution centre at Calvary Chapel in San Juan (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

“I want any young men who buy a gun to be treated like young women who seek an abortion. Think about it: a mandatory 48-hours waiting period, written permission from a parent or a judge, a note from a doctor proving that he understands what he is about to do, time spent watching a video on individual and mass murders, traveling hundreds of miles at his own expense to the nearest gun shop, and walking through protestors holding photos of loved ones killed by guns, protestor who call him a murderer. After all, it makes more sense to do this for young men seeking guns than for young women seeking an abortion. No young woman needing reproductive freedom has ever murdered a roomful of strangers.”

I long ago concluded that getting guns out of the American bloodstream is a doomed ambition. Precisely because they are in the bloodstream. In the constitution, the right to bear arms is thus in the nation’s DNA. But if this country today is so eager to craft rules narrowing access to abortion, can it not also narrow access to deadly weapons with legislation and regulation? Can it defend making access to guns a right and access for women to full healthcare a privilege?

Fox News stumped on how to describe Las Vegas shooter

There is scant reason to hope. Efforts to pass even a modest new package of gun controls in the wake of the killing of 26 children and teachers at a Connecticut primary school in 2012 collapsed on Capitol Hill. Nothing happened after the slaying of 46 in an Orlando night club last year and not even after a gunman attempted to assassinate a group of Republicans practising for an annual bipartisan baseball game on the outskirts of Washington DC earlier this year.

So horrific was Las Vegas, some Republicans and even the vaunted National Rifle Association, NRA, have been forced to make some gestures towards a response. They are offering to explore options to prevent the purchase going forward of so-called bump stocks. This is a modification that the Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, employed. When attached to a semi-automatic weapon, it essentially turns it into a fully automatic, able to spit bullets in a non-stop barrage. It’s how he was able to take down so many victims at the concert site in such a short time.

Some on the Republican side of the aisle have now suggested the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF, an arm of the administration, ponder new rules to ban the purchase of bump-stocks. Even the NRA has publicly stated its support for keeping bump-stocks out of the display counters in America’s gun shops.

Body cam footage shows officers during Las Vegas mass shooting

But hold the applause. By turning to the ATF, Republican members of Congress are reaching for political cover, expressing their concern about bump stocks, while avoiding having to pass legislation of their own that would surely get bogged down in partisan quarreling anyway. As for the NRA, in the same breath as asking for action on bump stocks, it also demanded national reciprocity of right-to-carry laws – citizens from a state that allows them to walk around carrying heat given the same right in every US state – to “allow law-abiding Americans to defend themselves and their families from acts of violence”.

That takes us straight back to the same tired, outrageous argument – the only way to stop bad guys with guns is to give guns to the good guys. As if good guys could really have taken out a man firing at them from a window 32 floors high.

It is the job of a president to help the nation get back on the path of humanity and decency when it has strayed into the weeds. When a tragedy like Vegas strikes. Like that’s going to happen.

Communist Party congress: How China picks its leaders - BBC News

Communist Party congress: How China picks its leaders

7 October 2017

Members of the Politburo Standing Committee - China's top decision-making body - are unveiled at the end of every party congress

Every five years, the eyes of the world turn to China as the ruling Communist Party holds its congress.

The event determines who will lead the Party. Those people will go on to lead the 1.3 billion people of China - most of whom don't get a say - and helm the world's second largest economy.

The 19th congress will begin on 18 October and while significant leadership changes are expected current Party leader and Chinese President Xi Jinping is widely expected to stay in the top job.

What does the congress do?

In mid-October, Communist Party of China (CPC) delegates from across China will meet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The party has 2,300 delegates - although only 2,287 have been elected to attend, with reports suggesting the remaining 13 delegates were disqualified because of "improper behaviour".

The announcement of China's new leaders takes place at Beijing's Great Hall of the People

Behind closed doors, those CPC delegates will elect the powerful Central Committee, which has about 200 members.

This committee in turn elects the Politburo and from that, the Politburo Standing Committee is chosen.

Those are China's real decision-making bodies. The Politburo currently has 24 members, while the Standing Committee has seven, although these numbers have varied over the years.

While there is a vote, in reality many of these people have already been handpicked by the current leadership, and the committee just approves their edict.

The Central Committee also elects the Party's top leader - the general secretary - who becomes the country's president. That is, and will most likely continue to be, Xi Jinping.

What do we expect this year?

The 19th Congress will be closely watched for two main things.

First, Mr Xi will deliver a lengthy report that will be scrutinised by analysts for signs on China's political policy direction for the next five years.

Secondly, the Politburo Standing Committee is expected to be nearly completely refreshed.

Wang Qishan heads the anti-corruption agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection

In recent years, the party has set informal term and age limits on certain posts. Most Politburo members are expected to step down as they are past the informal retirement age of 68.

They include Wang Qishan, head of the anti-corruption agency, although as a key Xi ally he may be persuaded to stay.

Mr Xi and Premier Li Keqiang are in their early 60s.

We would normally expect to see a new line-up of future leaders presented to the public at the congress - including a possible eventual successor to Mr Xi - who would take over in five years' time.

However, there is some speculation Mr Xi might break with tradition this time round and delay this step.

What else does it mean for Xi Jinping?

It's likely there'll be a further overall consolidation of power by Mr Xi.

He has assumed an unprecedented number of positions since coming to power in 2012, including the title of a "core" leader of China, which puts him on par with past political giants like Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

There are likely to be more of his allies placed in leadership positions at the congress, and we may see the enshrining of his policies, known as "Xi Jinping Thought", in the party charter.

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the Dialogue of Emerging Market and Developing Countries on the sidelines of the 2017 BRICS Summit in Xiamen, southeastern China's Fujian Province on 5 September 2017Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGES

Image caption

Mr Xi is the current Communist Party general secretary and is expected to retain the position

That move would again place him on the level of Mao in Chinese political history.

Some believe he may even announce a move that would extend his rule past the traditional two-term limit for the presidency.

The ever-growing power of China's Xi Jinping

How China guards the Xi creation myth

Since becoming president in 2012, Mr Xi has spearheaded a sweeping anti-corruption campaign which has seen more than a million officials disciplined. It has been seen by some as a massive internal purge of opponents.

Media captionSongs have been written celebrating Chinese President Xi Jinping, one even has an accompanying dance routine

A movement dubbed by some as "the cult of Xi" has also emerged, with propaganda songs dedicated to him and a deluge of positive press in state media, who have coined a nickname aimed at endearing him to citizens - "Xi Dada", or Uncle Xi.

Who is Xi Dada?

A misty-eyed ode to China's leader from a deputy editor

What does this mean for the rest of the world?

Analysts believe that while a major reshuffle of the Standing Committee could herald some policy changes, by and large China would continue on the same track, with Mr Xi still at the helm to ensure stability.

At home, China's five-year economic reform plan is still in play, as is Mr Xi's anti-corruption campaign and growing authoritarian rule.

China's 'War on Law' crackdown

Human rights: What is China accused of?

China's top social media platforms under investigation

China's push for the spotlight on the global stage, fronted by Mr Xi, is also expected to continue.

This ranges from the controversial South China Sea expansion and the One Belt One Road trade project, to China's positioning as the alternative superpower compared to the US under President Donald Trump.

But one tricky question that remains is North Korea and its ongoing nuclear crisis.

Some analysts believe that China would continue to hold back from taking decisive action as, even after the congress, its new leadership would still be "mired in internal debate" on how to handle its hot-tempered neighbour