Robin Niblett, director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, said President Xi Jinping is one of the most influential Chinese leaders in decades.

He depicts Xi as someone who embodies "a level of self-confidence, and a level of ambition that characterize the China of today and probably of the next 10 to 15 years."

As an outsider looking at this Party congress, Niblett said he is interested to see how the president will appoint a new cohort of officials under him to "take China through this next stage of economic development".