After days of intensive lobbying over cups of tea and moon cakes in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, the 2,048 delegates to the China Communist Party's 15th Congress will today wrap up their week-long session by electing a new central committee. It will guide the world's most populous country for the next five years. The central committee, currently 189-strong, will in turn vote in a new ruling Politburo tomorrow, finally deciding the outcome of a lengthy struggle for top places which will determine the future authority of President Jiang Zemin.
To a new, less orthodox, generation of Chinese, the question of who emerges triumphant in the jostling for places is less significant, however, than the fact that the congress has lived up to expectations and launched a new round of economic reform and opening up.
Like a set of traffic lights which are activated once every five years, the congress has given a green light to reform of state-owned enterprises, the banks, the pension system and the stock markets.
It has given a red light to corruption, which Mr Jiang warned could destroy the party, and also to Western-style democracy, but an orange signal for future political reform.
The important thing is that President Jiang put on record in his speech to the congress that developing democracy and the legal framework are the keys to making the system more acceptable and transparent, a western China expert told foreign correspondents.
Political reform will emerge as a big issue after the congress and it will be on the agenda at the next one, as the population is less willing to accept mistakes and will be quick to explode into anger. It is in fact unnecessary to have a dominant figure at the top, as long as they do things right.
The Communist Party, which has ruled China since 1989, has introduced village democracy and has been trying to make officials more accountable at local level. It is also creating a new body of law to deal with the developing economic and financial sectors.
Internal party democracy has been extended at this congress, according to reports which say that for the first time the number of candidates for the central committee is 10 per cent more than available places, raising the prospect of unpopular figures being ousted.
Frantic lobbying is said to have been going on behind closed doors over wine, tea and moon cakes - the sweet meat Chinese people eat during the harvest festival which coincided with the congress.
Mr Jiang has been trying to gain promotions for fellow cadres from his power base of Shanghai. They are all tipped for the 20 or so places on the Politburo, but there are precedents for leading candidates being dumped during congress ballots.