In this photo taken on Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012, a woman covers her face with a leaflet as she sits with a group of elderly men near a temple in Xilinhot in northern China’s Inner Mongolia. In the small town where sheep and cattle easily outnumber humans, a deputy chief paid three times an average urban resident's annual salary to become its police chief. Buying and selling office is so rampant in China that it has eroded public trust in officialdom, undermining the ruling Communist Party’s image as an institute that promotes the competent, not the connected. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart, Vice President Joseph R. Biden, display T-shirts given to them by students at the International Studies Learning Center in South Gate, Calif., on Feb. 17. Mr. Xi is expected to take over as head of the ruling Communist Party in November, before becoming president in 2013. Below are the dusty remnants of an abandoned cave dwelling where Mr. Xi lived during part of his youth, when he was sent to learn Mao-era peasant virtues. (The Associated Press)
In this Oct. 9, 2012 photo, an electoral roll and two candidatesà resumes are taped to a barber shopÃs store window, in Old Havana, Cuba. Elections in Cuba lack the hoopla they have in other countries, but authorities here say they give people a voice in government and answer charges that the communist-run country is undemocratic. Critics call the votes, including one scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012, a sham since voters canÃt throw out the Communist Party or the Castros. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)
**FILE** Bo Xilai, then the Chongqing party secretary, attends a plenary session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 11, 2012. Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, who is accused of murdering Bo family associate Neil Heywood, went on trial Aug. 9, 2012, at the Hefei Intermediate People's Court in eastern China. Bo was already in the Communist Party's 25-member Politburo and before the scandal was seen as a contender for the nine-member Standing Committee that runs China. (Associated Press)
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta exchanges pleasantries Wednesday with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Mr. Xi is set to become Communist Party chief next month and president next spring. (Associated Press)
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta exchanges pleasantries Wednesday with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Mr. Xi is set to become Communist Party chief next month and president next spring. (Associated Press)
** FILE ** Cuba's Fidel Castro delivers a speech during the 50th anniversary of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution on Sept. 28, 2010, in Havana. Mr. Castro said on Tuesday, March 22, 2011, that he resigned five years ago from all his official positions, including head of Cuba's Communist Party, a position he was thought still to hold. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano, File)
China's Communist Party dismissed Bo Xilai as Chongqing party secretary in March. (Associated Press)
Former Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong (center) stands in Municipal Higher Peoples Court in Beijing in July 1998. Chen was deposed as Beijing's Communist Party boss for corruption and is serving a 16-year prison sentence. (AP Photo/Xinhua News Agency)
