Every five years, the Chinese Communist Party, the party that rules China's single-party system, holds a national Congress,

during which rearrangements to the country's leadership are announced,

and changes to the party's constitution are also made public.

These events tend to be pretty well orchestrated ahead of time,

more like an Apple product announcement than a democratic event during which things are actually decided and hashed out in real time in public.

But they are also widely watched, in part because Chinese citizens want to know where their country is headed next,

but also because there's a fair bit of obscurity and opacity in the upper echelons of Chinese leadership,

to the point where there's a good amount

of Kremlinology-style interpretation surrounding every last detail of these events by the international

community. Who stands next to whom? In what order people are announced? The ages of the people

involved? Where they come from? things they've said in the past,

the music and colors and specific words used.

All of it is analyzed as a potential signal as to what might happen next,

who the world will be dealing with, what their policies will be, and so on.

This year's Congress was substantially less mysterious than those of previous years, though,

because the question of who would be named chairman, who would lead the Communist Party,

and consequently, the country, was more or less for ordained.

Xi Jinping has been the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the President of

China since 2012 and 2013 respectively.

She has since consolidated power around himself by all indications recalibrating the party and the government

to orient around his goals and continued place at the top of the local power pyramid.

And this Congress, as a consequence, was largely seen as a groundbreaking event only in that it would be announced that she would be given a third term in office

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