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Clockwise from top left: Carlos Barria / Reuters, Ng Han Guan / AP, Alexander F. Yuan / AP, How Hwee Young / EPA
Scenes from the corridors and anterooms of the Great Hall of the People during the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
By Le Li, NBC News
BEIJING — More than a thousand reporters turned up at the Great Hall of the People on Wednesday, expecting to cover the closing session of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Congress where the final leadership line-up would be revealed. But they soon discovered the election of the country's new leaders had ended before they had even entered the main conference hall.
Instead, they heard about the results the same way everyone else did: from state news agency Xinhua.
Xinhua live-blogged the event – both in Chinese on Sina Weibo and in English on Twitter, even though the latter is still blocked in China. When the news agency posted a message that President Hu Jintao was casting a vote, the journalists were all stuck in the long corridors of the Great Hall of the People.
Ed Jones / AFP - Getty Images
Journalists wait in a corridor to be allowed access to the main hall during the closing ceremony of the Communist Party Congress on November 14, 2012.
I was one of them. By then, we had been waiting for over 10 minutes. Most of the others had been in the Great Hall of the People for almost three hours, but I was in good spirits, joking with the journalists around me about when we'd be allowed in.
When I saw Xinhua’s tweet announcing that Hu would be casting his vote, those feelings evaporated. There was nothing we could do – the line of reporters still wasn't moving. I could feel the temperature rising around me.
China's communists pick country's new leader
Clockwise from top left: Vincent Yu / AP, Wang Zhao / AFP - Getty Images, David Gray / Reuters, David Gray / Reuters
Scenes from the Great Hall of the People during the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
Xinhua started reporting that Vice-President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang had been elected as members of the Central Committee, the highest authority in the party. Although we had shuffled forward a bit, we were still outside the entrance to the main hall. Some journalists didn’t even bother to wait in line and sat around with the conference hall staff pouring themselves tea.
Le Li / NBC News
Surrounded by tea cups, a reporter rests while waiting in the bowels of the Great Hall of the People.
I tried posting the news on Weibo but the name “Xi Jinping” was blocked.
“Was the previous Party Congress like this, too?” a man asked someone behind me.
A woman replied, “No, I came here ten years ago. It was not like this at all.”
I turned around and saw they were reporters for a local Chinese news website. “Can you tell me what’s different?” I asked.
She took one look at my press pass and stopped talking. On my pass, it was clearly written in big Chinese characters: “USA.” She turned her head away.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
Security personnel sitting as they guard different areas of the Great Hall of the People.
Communist Party's Congress grinds on amid widespread indifference in China
I tried checking Weibo again but there were no updates from Xinhua. Instead, I heard a quarrel at the entrance. Some photographers were arguing with security guards who were trying to block the half-open entrance. One guard yelled, “No one is allowed to enter!”
Eager to know what was going on, I pushed to the front of the line. Suddenly, the entrance opened and the grand, cavernous Great Hall of the People lay before us.
Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images
The closing ceremony of the Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People on November 14, 2012.
From my distant vantage point, I aimed my camera at the stage and started madly snapping photos.
But which one was Xi Jinping? All of the men were wearing the same clothes. The only person who stood out was Liu Yandong – a woman, and she was wearing bright blue.
Yawns and other expressions of boredom as China's Communist Party Congress begins
I looked at my phone and read Xinhua’s final tweets. “The voting concludes,” Xinhua said. “The new Central Committee of the Communist Party Congress and the new Central Commission for Discipline Inspection have been elected. The hall filled with great applause.”
Le Li / NBC News
Reporters taking pictures of cars parked in the courtyard of the Great Hall of the People.
It was all over.
All I had done was wait around in a corridor and take some pictures – along with every other journalist there. The best shot was of the courtyard, where more than 50 Audis were parked. Everyone else took the same photo and posted it on Twitter. The pictures were deleted within minutes, after netizens questioned why the Chinese leaders did not drive their own national brand, Red Flag.
One blogger noticed a Lexus among the Audis and commented, “One is even Japanese brand.”
We might not have been able to report on the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Congress, but at least we could prove that the Audi is the Chinese leadership’s car of choice.
Read more about China on NBC's Behind the Wall
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Carlos Barria / Reuters
Black Audi cars fill a parking lot inside the Great Hall of the People.
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In other words, not much has really changed, it is still communism with a capitalistic manufacturing side aided by near slave level labor pools. They just were smart enough to learn by watching Russia crash and burn, that state run manufacturing and business have proved not to work worth a shi# (why can't our congress learn that?).
Aren't we bright to keep buying from from the slave masters and line their pockets while we take constant pot shots at our own people and wreck our economy.
Don't forget. they are also the ones that own most of our debt and much of our real estate. Obama is no help here. China can cripple us any time they please.
the workers work there on their free will. the labor is cheap there because the living cost is cheaper. it has nothing to do with slavery.
They work there on their free will! While that statement is ultimately true, your ascertation that it has "nothing to do with slavery" is a bit ignorant. If you had an opportunity to visit one of those manufacturing plants, see the work those "free-willed" individuals do, and talk with them about the conditions of the workplace, hours they work, and wages they earn, I think your perspective would change drastically. The plain fact is that the supply of workers (because of China's massive population) is far higher than the demand for employees. For this reason, companies cut costs by paying their employees extremely low wages. Most of the people working at those plants are people from the countryside who moved to the cities for jobs, and barely make enough money to live, then send a tiny bit home for their families. Their is no path for growth within the company, there are no raises, there is no sense of urgency for the employer to treat these people fairly. So yes, these people can quit, and the company will have no problem replacing them, but where will they go. I am fairly conservative, especially economically, but this is a ghast human rights violation when we look at it from a US vantage point (that all men inherently have the right to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness). But China is not the US, so I guess who really cares about those people.
"Great Hall of The People"
Where apparently none of 'the people' knows what is going on.
That's why the word "people" is never used in the U.S. to better reflect the reality.
Why were these "journalists" disappointed? Everyone knew the outcome of the vote to being with.
If the world keeps kowtowing to China, these hand-picked, human-rights-abusing tyrants will continue to wield more power than they deserve.
The Russians, with luck our soon-to-be allies, has the Chinese on its eastern border and Islamists cramming them on the south. And we fret about Mexicans?
and why would russian want to be our ally? seem like its opposite, they partner up with china to keep our influence minium in the region. as far as islamist, seem like they all target us not china
Are the American's happy with their own so for called free market system, at least in China things seem to be gong pretty well. Provided the US keeps out. Maybe you should look at yourselves first before trying to make China your scapegoat.
New slave masters assume rule in China is just more of the same. The Chinese people some how have embraced slavery over thousands of years of despotic rule. What a pity. As for Russia, it is nearly the same situation. The only thing that has changed is the titles of the Czars.