“Times have changed … today men and women are equal,” Mao Zedong pronounced more than half a century ago. “Whatever men comrades can accomplish, women comrades can too.” Unless, of course, you mean running the country. For not once since Mao’s communists took power in 1949 has a woman been appointed to China’s top political body, the politburo standing committee, let alone become the country’s top leader. Few expect that to change on Wednesday when the Communist party’s great and good congregate in Beijing to celebrate the start of Xi Jinping’s second five-year term and conduct a highly scripted reshuffle of the party’s upper echelons.
