Generational change in the leadership of China's Communist Party is the main headline coming out of its 16th congress last week. There is a sweeping change of faces, with younger men taking over the most powerful positions.
But the outgoing general secretary of the Politburo standing committee, Mr Jiang Zemin, retains indirect power by sponsoring many of the newcomers and he keeps control of the armed forces. Despite some changes in doctrine and ideology, there is a much more substantial continuity of policy coming out of this congress.
China faces formidable problems in harnessing market-based development to one-party control. The outgoing leadership has presided over a fundamental shift in political priorities, continuing the profound changes introduced by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. Its key features are privatisation of state property, encouragement of entrepreneurial initiative, encouragement of foreign investment and the consequent development of a thriving economy independent of state ownership. Major effects include growing social and regional inequalities, increasing unemployment and widespread protests by those affected.
The success with which the seemingly incompatible objectives of monopoly Communist Party rule and private capitalist development have been combined in China provides the new, younger, leadership with a confident mandate to continue this programme of change under the watchful eyes of Jiang Zemin. It is justified in the names of stability, consensus and technocratic professionalism - eminently conservative virtues compared to the party's revolutionary past.
Informed observers of the Chinese scene say this has been achieved at the cost of an atrophying party structure which no longer involves its millions of members in much more than a token fashion. China's wider system of governance also faces many problems. Privatisation has encouraged corruption, cynicism and careerism among party ranks, which affect its capacity to mobilise support and command authority - as well as also affecting the ability of the central state to collect taxes from increasingly autonomous regions.
These problems will confront the new party leadership in coming years. There is no sign of any willingness to relax its political monopoly. Party leaders are determined to avoid the political chaos and collapse which broke up the Soviet Union. So far they have done so successfully, but the challenge remains.