We were heading east from the ancient trading city of Kashgar towards the little town of Selibuya, the scene this week of the worst violence to erupt in Xinjiang since major riots in 2009.

The name, Xinjiang, means "new frontier" in Chinese. It is a vast desert region at the very western edge of China. Geographically and culturally you feel far closer to Central Asia and Afghanistan than Beijing.

Xinjiang is rich in oil and gas. Needing energy to power its hungry economy China is developing this remote province fast. Construction teams are busy building new motorways through the desert. Lines of lorries churn up huge clouds of dust.

But China's rule, and the influx of Chinese workers and money, are causing tensions with Xinjiang's Muslim Uighur population. In this latest eruption, 21 people died.

At the edge of Selibuya we slipped past a checkpoint manned by armed police. The government does not want journalists here, so we took care to keep a low profile.

Selibuya is little more than a one-street town. Uighur men wearing their traditional skull-caps guided donkey-carts through the traffic. Women in headscarves sold piles of oranges. The market was busy. On the surface there was not much tension.

But police cars, their lights flashing, were making circuits through town every few minutes in a show of force. Officers on foot were patrolling the streets and, behind the market, more armed police had cordoned off the scene of this week's violence - a two-storey building, part of it burned by fire.

The government's version is that a group of what it calls "terrorists" were in the building, watching jihadi videos and plotting attacks. Three local government workers, sent to investigate a report about suspicious people stumbled on them, were taken hostage and knifed to death, it says.

A dozen police sent to the scene were then forced into a room and burned to death, the government adds. Finally, armed officers allegedly shot dead six of the "gangsters" and captured eight more.

There have been no independent accounts of what happened, until now. The government's story is the only one that has been put forward.

We found people in Selibuya were scared to talk to journalists. Some said they had been threatened by officials, warned not to speak to outsiders. But we soon found witnesses who cast doubt on the official narrative.

Rather than "terrorists", local people told us the violence involved a local family who had had a long-standing dispute with officials.

The family, we were told, were very religious. Officials had, for a long time, been pressuring the men in the family to shave off their beards, and the women to stop wearing full veils covering everything but their eyes.

Local government regulations, we were told, stipulate that women must not wear full veils, and only men who are over 40 years old are allowed to grow beards.

We cannot identify those who talked to us, as they are at risk of official reprisals, but one person said "community workers asked the family not to have their women cover their faces".

"They'd been telling them for a long time. They never agreed," the person added.

Another said: "I'm not well educated, but to my understanding, they are not terrorists."

It is not clear how the dispute turned so violent and why so many police and officials were killed, but a third person said: "I think the government bothered them too many times. They became very annoyed."

"But beards have nothing to do with terrorists. Asking a woman to take her veil off is disrespectful to her and to her religion."

One eyewitness also gave a graphic and disturbing account of how some of the men in the family died. Again, it does not fit with the official story that the "terrorists" were shot.

"I saw police coming," said the witness, "then I saw one injured man, carrying a knife about a metre long, chasing the police. They all ran into the government compound (across the road from the market).

"The injured man pushed his way in too. He was immediately shot in the leg and fell to the ground. Many police surrounded him. They stabbed him to death with their pickaxes."

The witness went on to describe how three of the man's friends then arrived to help him, saw what had happened and fled to some nearby shops.

"The police tried to catch the men who fought back with axes and knives," the witness told us. "The police shot them twice in the body. They fell to the ground."

This account clearly raises questions about how at least one of the men died at the hands of police, and, possibly, whether there was justification for shooting the other three as well.

We were unable to find out more about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the 15 police and government workers the men allegedly killed. We were spotted by police before we could get any information that might have corroborated the government's account of how they died.

Armed police took us to the government compound. An officer there warned us that there were "violent terrorists" still around.

"Some people here are extremists, they've even killed people from their own ethnic group," he said. "Don't you care about your own safety? This is the enemy's war zone. What if someone chops your head off? Go."

So we were ordered to leave Selibuya.

China has dominated Xinjiang for centuries. Its policy there now mirrors that in Tibet, to bring development and economic benefits on the one hand and to deal with security threats with an iron fist on the other.

The recent influx of Chinese migrants means that Xinjiang's 10 million Uighurs are no longer in the majority. Muslims, with a language that is Turkic in origin, many feel their culture is threatened, their religious rights are restricted.

From outside China some preach holy war, posting jihadist videos on the internet, saying Uighurs want their land back and will take up arms to drive out China. These groups are tiny offshoots from al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

There is no conclusive evidence that these militants have the ability to organise attacks inside China.

China has not blamed any single group this time, but it often claims international terrorist groups influence the violence in Xinjiang. There have been a series of attacks in recent years in which police and officials have been targeted, most in and around Kashgar.

Following this latest incident, China's President Xi Jinping said China should "give no mercy to terrorists, and eradicate them". He added: "Xinjiang's anti-terrorism situation is becoming more complicated. The task to maintain stability is more and more difficult."

Critics, though, say that by blaming "terrorists" China is ignoring the root cause of Uighur resentment, and China should rethink its own, heavy-handed tactics.

In response to the deaths in Selibuya the US state department said it "regretted the unfortunate acts of violence that led to these casualties", but it did not condemn the acts as terrorism. Instead, it called on China to "take steps to reduce tensions and promote long-term stability in Xinjiang".

That has infuriated China, which argues that following the Boston bombings the US is guilty of double standards.

Beijing's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said: "China ensures the rights of people from all ethnic groups including their religious rights. We are firmly opposed to the US confusing black and white, and right and wrong.

"Not only do they not condemn violent terrorist acts, but they also make casual and irresponsible accusations against China's ethnic policy."

In Selibuya, though, we heard some frustration with China's ethnic policies, at the restrictions on men growing beards and women wearing veils, if they wish.

When we asked to see the scene where the officials were killed, the police told us: "You cannot, the situation is very complicated. Honestly, when we send people there we have plainclothes police and guards, in case we meet an extremist. Two knives and you're chopped."

We never felt threatened while on the streets of Selibuya, but we had to leave the town. So much about this incident and about why 21 people died remains unclear.

What is clear is that such violent incidents keep happening, and people keep dying - Uighurs, Han Chinese and others too.

They jostle for space with military trucks and ambulances.

Eighteen thousand Chinese troops have been deployed to help in the aftermath of Saturday's earthquake. The rescuers have now reached Longmen and other villages that surround the quake's epicentre.

Longmen sits astride a river in one of Sichuan's high valleys. The land is lush and fertile, surrounded by high mountain ridges. Stands of bamboo sprout from the slopes. The fields are planted with sesame, spinach and rice.

But throughout this high valley, in every village and settlement now, homes are smashed, rubble lies in the streets, and roofs have caved in: the destruction brought by the shockwaves from the earthquake.

And everywhere too now there is fear. People live in fear of the next tremor. There have been hundreds of aftershocks in the 36 hours since the quake.

Every hour the tremors come. Some are barely noticeable. But others make the ground shake under your feet. First you hear a distant sound, a boom, like someone banging a giant drum.

Then the swaying begins.

While we were in Longmen several shocks hit. People, already traumatised by the original quake shrieked, grabbed their children, and rushed to get away from any large buildings still standing.

"It was terrifying when the earthquake struck," Chen Yue Xian told us.

"There was nowhere we could escape to," she said. "Now I feel no place is safe. I have no sense of security. I feel I could be buried alive here and die."

Standing beside her, 52-year-old Zhang Mei Zhen said: "I heard my son calling, 'Mum run, run'. I got so scared I couldn't run. Bricks were falling on top of me as I got out. We were so scared."

In village after village, people too afraid to go back into any houses still standing are gathered outside. Some sit under awnings, some in the open, belongings piled next to them.

Clusters of new, blue tents have sprung up, delivered by the rescue teams. But many people have no shelter.

So families have salvaged furniture and are sitting on sofas out by the roadside, some have pulled mattresses and quilts from their damaged homes, others just have mats on the ground.

Everywhere, too, families have set up outdoor kitchens to prepare food. But many say they have received no help from the government yet, apart from a little drinking water for each person.

Yang Hua Fen wanted to show us how she now has to live. So she took us past a ruined cottage to show us the huge cracks that run through her two-storey, concrete house.

She has only a straw mat for a shelter, a bag of rice donated by relatives and some eggs. Flies crawl over everything.

"We have to eat this," she complains. "If we don't eat we are going to starve to death."

Then, getting angry she adds: "We need food, and a place to live, and water. We are drinking river water and we are getting headaches. Our children have no food to eat. Can you deliver the message to senior officials?"

Then she pulled out her mobile phone and waved it in the air.

"They say on the TV everything is great, but it's not. I am receiving text messages that tell me the government cares about us, that they are giving us this much money, this much food, but we haven't seen it," she says.

Many it seems are getting frustrated and tempers are rising. Fifty-eight-year-old Gao Shi Qun stepped forward, anxious to have her say.

"We don't have any food to eat. We see the country's economy is getting greater and greater every year, but we haven't had any help, or money, it's never our turn to get something."

Her neighbour, Wang Zheng He, 77, and the dozen members of his family have only a small wooden shack as their house collapsed too. Mr Wang said the government's response hadn't been good enough.

"We have not got anything, only three bottles of mineral water each since the earthquake. The children are starved."

As he spoke his relatives spotted a village official walking past. They hurried to surround him, demanding to know "why haven't we got anything? How long are we going to have to wait?"

The official smiled a little helplessly. "We are just low level officials. We don't know. So far the biggest problem is supplies are not getting to us quickly enough. The first problem is tents, and we have a big problem of food."

I asked him: "People are hungry, their children have nothing to eat. What can you do for them?"

And he replied: "Because supplies are too slow, they will just have to fend for themselves."

The crowd, now angry, replied: "And how do we do that?"

As we headed out of Longmen back down the valley we found roads choked with army trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying emergency teams. Further down the hill were lines of trucks carrying more supplies.

Trying to get in, too, are many private volunteers, bringing food and water to help. But the authorities say the volunteers are simply clogging the roads, slowing everything.

One military officer in Longmen complained that the worst thing about this earthquake was the road up here. "All those volunteers bringing two packets of instant noodles each blocking the roads."

Whatever the reason for the lack of supplies, many are now sitting out in the open, frustrated and hungry. They have either lost their homes or are too afraid to return to them, and can do little but wait for aid.

The pledge to work with the US is a clear signal of China's displeasure with North Korea. China is North Korea's only ally, and is not going to stop supporting the North, but wants it to calm things down.

The question is will North Korea listen? In recent weeks the North's regime has made clear it now views having nuclear weapons as vital to its survival.

It has said explicitly that it won't bargain them away.

The pledge to work with the US is a clear signal of China's displeasure with North Korea. China is North Korea's only ally, and is not going to stop supporting the North, but wants it to calm things down.

The question is will North Korea listen? In recent weeks the North's regime has made clear it now views having nuclear weapons as vital to its survival.

It has said explicitly that it won't bargain them away.

The camps, a gulag-type network created half a century ago, hold thousands of inmates who are made to undergo "laojiao", also known as "re-education through labour".

But the case of one woman, Tang Hui, sent to a camp last year, galvanised public opposition to the system. Reforming it would be a significant legal step.

Tang Hui took us to visit the camp where she had been held, tucked into a fold of hillside, an hour or so from Changsha in Hunan Province.

The Zhuzhou Baimalong Labour Camp is an imposing sight, built like a prison.

At the front there's a giant, curved facade, lined with classical columns, where the main gate stands. Behind it is a sprawling collection of white buildings, some six or seven storeys high, with workshops, vegetable gardens and a parade ground, all surrounded by a high wall and watchtowers.

The camp is just one component in China's sprawling gulag system, known as "laojiao". These camps are a throwback to the years just after China's Communist revolution, and many outside China don't even know they still exist.

There's a constant flow of police vehicles and buses in and out of the camp. It's big enough to hold hundreds of inmates, all sent here to undergo "re-education through labour". You see them every now and again, in lines, walking from one building to another, performing exercises.

Drifting on the wind you can hear the chants of inmates, undergoing their forced re-education. Just an order from a policeman is enough to have you locked up here for as long as four years.

Tang Hui, a former inmate, guides us closer to the huge camp gate. Her incarceration here last year caused outrage in China.

"It was living nightmare. A real nightmare would have been better. I could have woken up from that," she says, dissolving into tears.

Her ordeal began in 2006 when her 10-year-old daughter disappeared from home. Unbeknown to Tang Hui, the girl had been raped and then lured to a local karaoke centre by a man she'd met. There she was gang raped again by four men, beaten and forced to work as a prostitute.

Local police did little to track down the missing girl, saying she'd probably run away from home. Tang Hui didn't give up and, after three months searching her hometown of Yongzhou, discovered where her daughter was being held. Only then did the authorities act, freeing the girl and arresting her captors.

Tang Hui campaigned vigorously for the death penalty for the men who did it. But she says the pimps had powerful connections in the police force, and the bad publicity the case brought may have tarnished the careers of local officials.

So those same police and officials had Tang Hui sent to Zhuzhou Baimalong camp to undergo 18 months of re-education. She says it was an act of revenge to silence her. Her re-education meant being told she must obey whatever the Communist Party says.

"I felt desperate, but I didn't shed a single tear, because I knew they were monitoring me all the time," she says.

"They wanted me to break down. They told me: 'If you promise to drop your case you can leave this place early.' I told them I would never write such a promise."

Like all of those sent to labour camps Tang Hui went through no legal process. There was just a written order and she was shut away. Her lawyers used the internet to spread word of her incarceration. It caused uproar and she was released after nine days.

"After my re-education I realised my mistake," she says.

"I'd pursued justice for my daughter because I thought the Communist Party was there for me. I thought the government and police would back me up. But I don't believe that any more. They've treated me like an enemy. They attack us instead of protecting us."

China's re-education through labour system was set up in the 1950s to silence political opponents. Today it's used to lock up undesirables like drug addicts and prostitutes, along with those like Tang Hui who complain too loudly about injustices, or people who are members of religious movements banned by the Communist Party.

Beijing lawyer Pu Zhiqiang says the whole system goes against China's own constitution and the rights its citizens should enjoy.

"Re-education through labour is illegal and wrong," he says. "People have their freedom taken away without any court case. They can't even appeal the decision until after they've served their time. It's a sign that China remains a police state. Not a country with the rule of law."

China's new leaders, aware the system is deeply unpopular, have indicated they are considering reforming it.

New Premier Li Keqiang, in his first news conference on Sunday, said authorities were "working intensively" on the plan to reform the system, and the plan "might be unveiled before the end of the year".

Some had expected reforms might come sooner. Many believe the police are resisting change, unwilling to give up the enormous powers they enjoy.

So Xi Jinping and China's new government could tinker with the system and leave parts of it intact, or they could opt for more far-reaching reforms. A bolder course may signal that limiting the powers of officials and police and beginning to strengthen the rule of law is a priority for the new leadership.

However, any reform will not affect the far bigger system of prison labour camps, estimated to hold millions.

In some places camps under the laojiao system are already being wound down, albeit slowly. In Yunnan in south-western China several former camps now hold only drug addicts. Dressed in identical uniforms, the addicts, undergoing detoxification treatments, march in squads. In the workshops they sit in ranks at tables making small electrical components.

Four years ago there were 160,000 inmates in the re-education system, according to official government statistics. By last year the number was down to 50,000 being held in 350 labour camps.

Many ordinary Chinese hate the system and want to see it scrapped in its entirety. One of them is Li Zhengtian, a well-known artist, philosopher and musician. He was sent for re-education in a coal mine in the 1970s. His crime? Drawing "big character posters" calling for the rule of law. He says today's China still urgently needs the rule of law.

"I refused to bow my head in submission, so they hit me, again and again," he says.

"I lay in a pool of my own blood for more than three hours. We must abolish it as soon as possible. The law should protect people's rights."

And Tang Hui, who was locked up for seeking justice for her daughter, is adamant, the camps must close for good if China is to build a just and fair society.

"Our leaders talk about social harmony, but there can be no harmony as long as the labour camp system exists," she says.

"It's brought too much pain. The only thing that stopped me from committing suicide in there was thinking about how I could get my revenge on those who sent me to the camp."

For now, at Zhuzhou and dozens of similar camps, life goes on in China's hated gulags. But the pressure for change is growing, and after Tang Hui's incarceration even China's official media have joined the chorus, saying it's time the system was "swept into the dustbin of history".

His ambition, he's indicated in speeches in recent weeks, is to lead a Chinese renaissance so China can resume its rightful place in the world.

Confirmed as China's new head of state, Mr Xi is now one of the most powerful leaders on the planet. He can, if he wishes, influence the destiny of hundreds of millions of people, inside and outside China. He can try to shape history. So will he? And if so, how? What does his dream mean?

China isn't a democracy, it's a one-party, authoritarian state. Three thousand delegates at the National People's Congress voted to approve Xi Jinping as president. But that means that for roughly every 460,000 Chinese, just one person got to vote for their new leader.

And Mr Xi's real power comes not from the job he began today, as China's president but from the two roles he was appointed to last November, as general secretary of the Communist Party and commander-in-chief of China's armed forces.

So Mr Xi has not had to campaign publicly for the job of president, he's not set out a manifesto, he's not had to put his character and policies on display. But he has indicated his dream is to make China prosperous, powerful and proud once again.

To reinforce that message, he has been making high-profile visits to carefully chosen locations around China in recent weeks. State television has given prominent coverage to his trips.

The first was to the "Special Economic Zone" of Shenzhen in the south, the cradle of China's economic revolution. The message of that visit was that Mr Xi wants to be seen as a reformer in the mould of Deng Xiaoping, the man who set China's economy free but kept its political system under tight control.

Then Xi Jinping visited two very poor areas - a village in the mountains in Hebei near Beijing, and the arid lands of Gansu in the west.

He was filmed meeting peasants, tasting their food, chatting with them in their homes. This time the message was that Mr Xi wants to be seen as a "man of the people", in touch with the concerns of poor Chinese.

The Communist Party is aware that its image and authority have been eroded as people have seen corruption and inequality soar along with China's growing wealth.

The party risks becoming viewed as the defender of privilege. So Mr Xi is promising more action to tackle corruption, to spread China's wealth, to create a fairer society.

Finally he's also paid visits to high-profile military units. Part of Xi Jinping's dream is also to make China a major military power.

His message to the armed forces was that they must continue to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party. China's military is expressly political, controlled by the party not by the state. Its duty is to uphold the rule of the party.

Mr Xi is a "princeling", the son of one of the men who led China's communist revolution. He's from a powerful and privileged background.

Alongside him in China's new leadership are many other princelings. Their patrimony imbues them with a sense of entitlement. They are the inheritors and the guardians of China's communist revolution.

But Mr Xi's relatives and many other powerful families have also become rich in recent years. According to an investigation by the Bloomberg news agency, Mr Xi's family has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets.

Tackling inequality and corruption may become problematic if it starts to affect the wealth of the party elite.

So perhaps the most significant indication of Mr Xi's intentions as China's new leader was not his public talk of his dream, but a private speech he gave to Communist Party members during his visit to Shenzhen.

The writer Gao Yu, who follows the politics of China's leaders, was passed quotes from the speech. She says Xi Jinping "knows exactly where the party's critical mistakes are".

First there's the fact that China must reform the way its economy is developing to make growth more sustainable, more equitable, less damaging to the environment.

Then there is the "wealth gap" that has opened up in China. "The benefits of reform have basically been taken by government officials. Money has flowed to them and to the rich, not into protecting our environment, or into social security, medical insurance or education," Ms Gao says.

"The whole world sees how corrupt our government officials are and how angry our people are. In their hearts people no longer believe in the legality of the party's rule. That is the most important thing that Xi has to solve."

And she says that when Xi Jinping speaks of reform, he does not mean political reform. In his private speech, Gao Yu says, Mr Xi was explicit, telling party members: "Some people define reform as changes towards the universal values of the West, the Western political system. This is a stealthy tampering with the concept and a misunderstanding of our reform. Our reform is reform that keeps us moving forward on the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics."

So, she believes, Mr Xi has his a different vision. "His political blueprint is to build a highly efficient and clean government. But whether this goal can be realised without democracy, constitutional rule, multiple parties or press freedom is the question," she says.

And Xi Jinping also posed a question to his private audience of party members. "Why must we stand firm on the party's leadership over the military?" he asked.

The answer he gave was "because that's the lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the USSR, where the military was depoliticised, separated from the party and nationalised, the party was disarmed."

And Mr Xi warned, when the Soviet Union came to crisis point "a big party was gone just like that. Proportionally, the Soviet Communist Party had more members than we do, but nobody was man enough to stand up and resist."

So for all that Mr Xi is being portrayed as a reformer, a man with a dream, Gao Yu believes he won't do anything that will destabilise China's current system. "The army is the foundation of our country, that's the way Xi thinks," says Gao Yu.

"After all he's not elected by the votes of the people, he thinks the army is the ultimate guarantee of the party's rule. The party has to control the military. It doesn't belong to the country or the people."

And she adds, Xi Jinping's vision of making China richer and stronger matters not as a goal in itself, but because it will strengthen the rule of the Communist Party.

Already elevated to the post of general secretary of the Communist Party last November, Xi Jinping will be confirmed as China's new head of state by the National People's Congress now meeting in Beijing.

So, naturally, the question everyone is asking is, what does the future hold for China? How will Xi Jinping govern this huge, complex and increasingly powerful nation?

Seen from the outside, China is envied by many, praised as the economic success story of the past decade.

As developed nations have stumbled, China's rise has seemed unstoppable. You'd think this would be a moment of celebration for China's leaders, old and new.

But as Premier Wen delivered his final major address to the Congress, the atmosphere was curiously flat.

He listed many successes - half his speech, 14 pages, was devoted to them. There was little sense that he was bowing out on a high though.

In the past five years, Mr Wen said, 30 million homes have been constructed or renovated, 18,000 reservoirs reinforced, 19,700km (12,200 miles) of railway and 609,000km of roads built - the lists went on and on.

Many times Mr Wen hailed "impressive achievements" and lauded his government's efforts, saying "we always strove" to do X, "we vigorously promoted" Y. The applause from the Congress, though, was muted.

Listening, Xi Jinping sat betraying little emotion. The reason may well be that both Mr Xi and the Congress seem to be preoccupied not by past achievements but future problems.

Wen Jiabao listed many of those problems - economic growth that's slowing, unsustainable and unbalanced, social services, pensions and healthcare that need investment, issues of corruption, serious pollution of China's air, soil and water, and food safety scares.

So for China's Communist Party, this leadership change is not so much a time of celebration as of introspection and anxiety.

The party is aware that in the eyes of many Chinese, its authority is eroding. And while the party leaders know the problems they face, they know too that there are few easy answers.

Wen Jiabao's speech was long on aspirations, short on announcements. Take pollution for example. China's leaders know it's an issue that ordinary people are increasingly angry about, but they have offered few solutions.

"We should adopt effective measures to prevent and control pollution," Wen Jiabao said, but he didn't enumerate what those measures might be.

There was no promise of a Clean Air Act or tough new powers for China's environmental authorities, just the promise to do better.

Mr Wen's reticence may be because he is about to step down. The new leadership may be waiting to announce new measures so they can take the credit for new policies.

But it may also be because many of China's problems are so tough to fix, particularly for a Communist Party that is, at heart, cautious and careful, concerned about making any missteps, about the unintended consequences of any changes it might make, and beholden to many of its own vested interests.

Take pollution again as an example. Reducing it will mean imposing new costs on industries that have to clean up their acts.

Some of those industries are state owned and are powerful political players. Others are private firms that live in a cut-throat, competitive world where costs matter.

New regulations would mean imposing new costs and may lead them to cut the size of their workforce. So, if you're Xi Jinping, what's worse - having more unemployed workers to find jobs for, or dirtier air for people to breathe? It won't be easy being China's new leader.

Which takes us back to the question hanging over this Congress and its leadership change. What direction will Mr Xi take?

The best answer for now, it seems, was there in Wen Jiabao's speech.

"Development is still the key to solving all our problems," he said. "We must keep economic development as the central task and give it our undivided attention."

"Urbanisation is a historical task," added Mr Wen, saying, "we can continue to advance our cause only by adhering to reform and opening up."

That's a pretty clear indication that change under Xi Jinping will be modest and incremental. "Reform and opening" means China's current path, opening its economy, but not reforming its political system.

So China under Xi Jinping will continue to pursue rapid economic growth, it'll continue to build its giant cities, to shift tens of millions from the countryside to the towns.

The Communist Party will try to make itself cleaner, more efficient, more responsive to the needs and aspirations of China's people.

But the old formula, trying to deliver increasing prosperity but not relaxing political control, is the one Mr Xi and the Communist Party are keeping faith with for now.

Tens of thousands of people have been signing up to follow a Sina Weibo microblog account - China's equivalent of Twitter - that seems to have inside access to the new Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

But who exactly is the mysterious "fan" who seems to be at Xi's side recording his every step? Is it really a simple "fan"? Or is it all a cunning PR ploy to burnish Mr Xi's image? And where might it lead?

The account goes by the name "Hao Hao Xue Xi" - a play on a Mao-era slogan and Mr Xi's name, it translates as "Study Hard", or the "Study Xi Fan Club". Here's a link, but you have to sign up for a Weibo account to be able to see it.

It's remarkable for the close-up, up-to-date images it posts of China's new leader, sometimes in apparently intimate moments. On Wednesday there was a photo of an obviously poor, elderly man clutching the hand of a smiling Mr Xi in front of a mud-walled house. Mr Xi is dressed in a simple, sober outfit.

He has been on a visit to a poor area of Gansu province. The moment is clearly spontaneous, but it looks like a publicity shot. The message isn't hard to decipher, Mr Xi is meant to look very much the caring leader, out and about to get in touch with ordinary people.

On 4 February there's something more unusual, a photo of Xi Jinping apparently snoozing in the front seat of a minibus while touring Gansu. It's taken from outside, snapped through the window, so it looks spontaneous again.

Usually nobody ordinary gets this close to a Chinese leader, and not even state media publish such unguarded shots. But it has a clear purpose, Mr Xi is shown not in a fancy limousine but an ordinary bus, reinforcing the message he's been giving that officials need to eschew luxury and extravagance. The other message is that this is a leader who works hard.

The caption the blogger has added to the photo is fawning. "He's been out and about for the past few days, he's very tired .. we young people are exhausted after running around for a day, not to mention someone like Xi who is almost in their sixties. Uncle Xi, please take care of your health. And when you appoint local government officials, choose capable ones so they can share your burden."

The blogger keeps adding details about Xi's movements. On 5 February at 11:05 he wrote: "Xi has arrived back at his hotel." On the 4 February at 11:40 he wrote: "Xi is visiting old people in an old people's home."

It's the sort of access to a national leader most journalists in China can only dream of. The movements of China's Communist hierarchy are a closely guarded secret, and only carefully screened pictures are released after most events.

The "Fan Club" began posting shortly after Xi Jinping was promoted to become general secretary of the Communist Party last November. At the start of this week it had 130,000 fans. But by Thursday numbers had soared to more than 490,000.

At times it has been way ahead of even the official news outlets. China's national TV news service, CCTV, posted a slightly miffed sounding comment on its own microblog asking: "What happened? The Study Xi Fan Club is quicker and closer to him than us."

Some think it's the slightly unsubtle work of Xi Jinping's own PR team, an aide or an official, trying to use the internet to shape his image as he prepares to take over as president.

On the 5 February the "fan", who says he's a young man from Shaanxi province, posted a message to claim: "I am just a normal internet user. I am working class. My company has given us time off for Chinese New Year, that's why I have time to follow Xi's movements. As a fan I care about him a lot. I am not a Communist. I am not a government official. I have nothing to do with his team."

He went on: "Every president has their own fan site, Obama, Putin .. it's my right to be a fan of whoever I like."

But most observers think it's inconceivable that this is just a random "fan" taking all these pictures. Another this week showed Xi in an ordinary canteen eating a simple meal. Coincidentally Mr Xi has recently called for Communist Party officials to give up on extravagance and there's an official campaign to clamp down on excessive banquets which waste huge quantities of food.

Or this week there was also Xi Jinping, again out in a rural setting, at the back of a crowd of people, humbly not pushing himself to the front. No ordinary Chinese citizen would be able to follow Xi to so many events.

There are now more than 500 million internet users in China. The internet is still heavily censored and foreign sites like Twitter and Facebook remain blocked. Three hundred million people use China's own microblog services. If they step over the line their posts are quickly deleted by an army of censors, but there is still much freewheeling debate and criticism that gets through.

So it seems likely the "Fan Club" is an attempt to give Xi Jinping a presence online. Many arms of China's government from police forces to local governments operate thousands of microblogs to ensure they have a voice.

But the question now being asked is whether the effort will go further. Will Xi Jinping himself venture online, openly? Will he dare to start up his own microblog? Or at least an official one operated by his office.

It's an intriguing prospect, but it would be a risky step as it would plunge China's leader into a world where many are highly critical of the Communist Party. Online people are often scathing in their opinions and highly inventive in the ways the find to pour ridicule on officials.

China's leader might also find himself deluged with complaints, grievances and suggestions from ordinary people, sent directly to him but visible to all on the internet. How would he deal with that? "Petitioners" who try to send letters or bring their grievances in person to the leaders in Beijing are already treated as a nuisance by many officials and are frequently rounded up. Trying to be more open online might backfire

China's Communist Party has ingrained habits of censorship and control when it comes to information, the media and the internet, changing those will be hard. Running a "Fan Club" is the easy option.

The descriptions of the grey smog that's hung over the city get more and more extreme: "Airmageddon", the "Airpocalypse".

Walking out into Beijing's streets is like plunging into a swirling soup. The pollution swathes the city, wreathing everything in grey.

To get a sense of it, take a look at this slideshow of before and after pictures that give a sense of what China's toxic sky is really like.

A combination of coal emissions, dirty diesel and industrial gases, the smog has smothered everything for days. On Thursday, levels still hovered around the "very unhealthy" mark.

As the official Xinhua news agency reported, more flights were delayed at Tianjin close to Beijing. Visibility in Shandong province south of Beijing was just 50m (164ft).

On Thursday, too, there were reported to be more than 100 cars in crashes in Beijing. The roads were icy and slippery, but poor visibility cannot have helped.

What were billed as "tough" measures brought in by Beijing's government this week to try to improve things simply have not been enough.

On Tuesday, 103 factories were ordered to shut down, and a third of government cars ordered off the roads to combat what was already being described as the worst January smog since 1954.

But even state-controlled media now say Beijing's tough measures were ignored by city officials themselves.

More than 800 government vehicles ordered off the roads were still in use, and several construction sites ordered suspended were still active on Wednesday, Xinhua reported.

So everyone now is looking at the weather forecast, hoping the smog will be blown away by winds forecast for Friday.

That's about the only thing that will bring some respite.

A bigger question will linger even after the smog has cleared: can China curb its polluting ways for good?

January's pollution has afflicted not just Beijing and its 20 million people, but more than 30 major cities and many tens of millions of people in addition.

As the Communist Party's English-language tabloid the Global Times put it in an editorial on Thursday: "China's rapid development has brought us many benefits as well as accumulated many problems. Environmental protection should take up a more prominent position in China's future strategy even if it means that China's economic development will slow down."

"Chinese people," the paper said, "should not tolerate environmental pollution for the pursuit of wealth... We cannot keep going with the situation that we have today."

The difficult bit is how to change the path China is on.

On the plus side, then, there is a growing realisation things have to change, and the media are now being allowed to debate the issue.

China's government seems to be in agreement. This week the cabinet approved an energy consumption "control target" for energy use by 2015.

On the minus side, that "control target" still means China's energy use will continue to expand, and, crucially, so will the burning of coal.

As Xinhua reported: "to meet the target, average annual energy consumption growth should be controlled at around 4.3% between 2011 and 2015, lower than the 6.6-percent annual increase realized between 2006 and 2010".

That means more emissions to come.

And as if to prove that changing China's habits will be hard, there is another worry on the immediate horizon.

Chinese New Year is just days away. Letting off vast quantities of fireworks is part of the Spring Festival celebrations, but the fireworks produce huge amounts of pollution.

"Setting off fireworks contributed greatly to air pollution in Beijing for half a month after Spring Festival in 2011," according to Du Shaozhong, former deputy director of Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

Eight million people had already posted messages on China's Weibo microblogs this week debating whether the fireworks should be stopped this year.

But the office in charge of Beijing's firework industry has said that residents can set off fireworks during the Spring Festival holiday according to the regulations, but that the office hopes residents will refrain from doing so, the China Daily reported.

I predict more smog.

The English-language tabloid the Global Times - which is published by the party's official mouthpiece, the People's Daily - said the trial "is expected to open after the 'two sessions' in March", sourcing the claim to someone close to the country's "top judicial body".

That means the trial, China's most high-profile one in years, may not happen until after the annual meetings of the National People's Congress, the NPC - China's rubber stamp legislature - and its counterpart, the advisory body the CPPCC. The meetings are when China's new Communist Party leader Xi Jinping will officially be installed as president, taking over as head of state, and so when China's once-in-a-decade transfer of power will be complete.

But, on Friday, we'd heard exactly the opposite, from another Beijing-backed paper, Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao.

It, too, had reported, based on sources, that the trial would begin today (Monday) in south-western China. That set the rumour mill swirling.

The Chinese Law Professor Blog was among those trying to get to the bottom of it.

Bo Xilai's impending appearance has been called "China's trial of the century", and some say it's the most important legal event in China since the "Gang of Four" were tried in 1981, after their power waned following Chairman Mao's death.

So, naturally, Ta Kung Pao's claim caused a stir. On the strength of it several dozen journalists, from international and Hong Kong media groups, travelled almost 1,500 miles from Beijing to the city of Guiyang over the weekend, a three-hour flight, just in case.

You can see what happened early this morning here. The reporters gathered outside the court, surrounded an official who came to say there was no trial, and wouldn't leave until a formal press conference was held to confirm there really was no trial happening.

Ta Kung Pao even reported on the effect of its own report.

So far, so farcical. The court officials in Guiyang had spent all day on Friday fielding phone calls from anxious reporters, and consistently denied they knew anything about the trial.

On Monday, they told reporters that "if the next step is to hold the Bo Xilai trial in Guiyang's court, then, as according to the rules we will inform our media friends promptly".

The Global Times' source on Monday said "the date and location of the trial will certainly be made public in advance, it's unnecessary to make speculations".

But it's a measure of how little confidence many have in the pronouncements of Chinese officials that so many journalists made the trek to Guiyang, anxious the "trial of the century" may be about to happen, and fearing it was possible it could start without China telling anyone.

Bo Xilai was one of the rising stars of Chinese politics - charismatic, populist, ambitious, with an impeccable communist pedigree as the son of a revolutionary leader. His downfall and arrest last year came after he fell out with Xi Jinping and other leaders. It caused a political crisis just ahead of the leadership transition.

He is now accused of massive corruption, abuse of power and having many mistresses. He was brought down last year after his former deputy, Wang Lijun, fled to the US consulate in Chengdu, told diplomats that Mr Bo's wife Gu Kailai had killed the British businessman Neil Heywood, and Bo had tried to cover it up. Gu Kailai and Wang Lijun have both already stood trial and been convicted.

Now no-one wants to miss the main event, Bo's own trial, because this is a story that brings together corruption, sex, money, murder and power struggles at the very top of China's secretive Communist Party-controlled state. It's a glimpse into the world of China's elite that we rarely see.

How the trial is handled will be a test for Xi Jinping and China's new leaders. They are anxious to show that this is an example of how China's authoritarian, one-party system can be trusted, by China's people, to deal with corruption and abuse of power. It's in their interest to ensure the procedures look transparent and impartial, so they can say that China is a nation with the rule of law, and corruption at the top is limited to just a few bad apples.

However, few in China are under any illusions that the trial is highly political and highly sensitive, and that the courts are subordinate to the Communist Party. There are many aspects of the case that the Party may not want aired openly. Bo Xilai has been held in secret. He has had no chance to defend himself against the accusations and may not get a chance during his trial.

Above all Mr Bo was popular. He said his policies were all about social justice, claiming he was cleaning up corruption, cracking down on dodgy officials in league with gangsters. He spent huge amounts on projects like subsidised housing, saying he wanted to narrow the growing gap between rich and poor.

His policies struck a chord and he had many followers. Some still don't believe he too was corrupt and apt to ride roughshod over the law. A small group even turned up outside the court in Guiyang today and unfurled a banner saying "Secretary Bo, corrupt and incompetent officials envy you, the people love you". So it's a dilemma for China's leaders, just how open to be about the trial, just how much detail to divulge about corruption among Party leaders, and just how harsh to be with Bo Xilai.

As for us journalists, we might be told when the trial is happening. But even if we are it's highly unlikely we'll be allowed inside to watch it happen up close - that may be a step too far.

This industrial city that sits on the Yangtze river in the middle of China is home to more than six million people.

In the grey murk the tower blocks on the far bank of the Yangtze look like shadows. Ships steam downriver laden with containers full of goods.

Wuhan is a pretty good place to take the temperature of what's happening in China's economy.

On the face of it things look good, China has just announced growth picked up a little at the end of last year to clock in at 7.8% for 2012. But that is well below the average of 10% China has recorded for the past decade.

Massive old iron and steel industries helped build Wuhan's economy. Wuhan Iron and Steel Corp (WISCO) is one of the biggest iron producers on the planet, among the biggest 500 firms in the world.

WISCO employs 80,000 people. The giant ironworks occupy 20 sq km of the city. It's a vast complex of factories and workshops. Giant piping criss-crosses the site, towers belch out smoke and steam pours from vents in the ground.

Molten steel pours from giant furnaces to be used in everything from cars to boats, railways to buildings. Huge slabs of it are piling up in warehouses, along with giant rolled sheets.

You'd think this firm would be booming given China's incredible economic growth. But despite sales worth billions of dollars every year WISCO is making a loss on its iron and steel, its only profits come from other businesses it has expanded into.

"The economic problems we're facing this time are more serious than the Asian crisis in 1998," explains Sun Jin, the firm's director of international communications. "It's like the steel business has entered a deep winter, it's probably going to continue for three to five years."

As China boomed many iron and steel mills were opened. But for much of the past two years growth has been slowing and even for an economy growing at nearly 8% a year there's just too much steel being produced - oversupply means WISCO can't make profits.

"To get through this winter we have to first strengthen our steel-making, to adopt new technologies and make higher quality steel," says Mr Sun. "We also aim to diversify into new businesses." WISCO's boss has even talked of going into pig farming.

Part of the problem is that WISCO is a giant state-owned enterprise. The government has ordered it to cut production, but it is not allowed to shed large numbers of jobs to save money.

It's China's problem too, giant state corporations still dominate parts of the economy. Many are inefficient and need to change if China is to create new, more profitable jobs for its workers.

Despite the problems at its biggest employer, the city of Wuhan is booming. It's province of Hubei, home to more than 60 million, is now among the fastest growing in China. Last year it expanded by around 12%.

The growth is, in large part, down to China's relentless drive to urbanise, which has now shifted from the coastal cities to inland areas like Wuhan. The whole city is dotted with construction sites, giant tangles of motorways have been built. Last month saw the opening of a new high-speed rail line and the city's first subway.

Wuhan is copying the formula that's been successful in places like Shanghai. But China's new generation of Communist leaders, headed by Xi Jinping, know this building spree can't continue forever. China's economy needs to reform.

That's why they have said China needs to switch from chasing high GDP growth as an end in itself to creating better-paying jobs that will lift incomes.

Urbanisation will continue to drive China forward, moving people from the countryside to the cities like Wuhan where they can earn more. But new jobs need to be created too.

So to replace Wuhan's grimy old industries, the city is doing its best to encourage new, higher-tech, innovative firms.

On a science park, workers in spotless white overalls are making screens for mobile phones.

Zhou Yunzhi is deputy general manager at Tianma Microelectronics. "China is making changes to its economic growth. We want some old industries to fade out and to develop new and high-tech industries," he says.

And he adds: "China is losing its advantage in labour-intensive industries. In the past we could rely on mass production, low quality but low cost. But we can't compete like that in future. We need to upgrade. So for the next 10 years we are going to go through a process of change."

Along part of Wuhan's river frontage you can see the aim taking shape. Han Street, a new, upmarket shopping district is being built, housing Western brands like Marks and Spencer from the UK, C&A, Zara and Uniqlo.

This is the new consumer economy China's new leaders want to grow. They want their country to rely less on exports and massive investments in construction projects as it does now, and develop instead China's own, domestic economy.

The idea is that a new middle class, with rising incomes, will spend more. Service industries will create more jobs, and the economy will be more sustainable.

It'll mean making deep changes to old industries like Wuhan Iron and Steel, reforming China's giant state-owned enterprises. It'll require changes to policies that restrict the ability of people to migrate permanently to the cities.

Bank and financial reforms are needed, changes to the way governments in places like Wuhan earn their revenues, and better provision of healthcare and pensions.

The goal is clear, but getting there, finding a way through the murk and smog that hangs over cities like Wuhan, and forging a future based not on steel but a different type of economy - that's the hard part.

Mr Xi was immediately more relaxed and at ease than the man he had just replaced as general secretary of China's Communist Party. Where Mr Hu often appeared stiff and wooden, Xi Jinping smiled and even apologised for keeping his audience waiting.

If he was nervous or awed by the prospect of ruling over one-fifth of humanity, there was no sign of it. At one point, he even seemed to become a little emotional while he was delivering his speech.

Perhaps it is Xi Jinping's pedigree as a Communist Party "princeling" - his father was a revolutionary hero alongside Mao Zedong and a powerful figure in the party - that means he seems more comfortable in his own skin.

Certainly, Xi Jinping has worked all his life for this moment. Rising through the party, he's been groomed for the top.

And when he spoke, Mr Xi seemed to signal a new tone, too. He was more direct, more plain-speaking, more blunt.

There was still some of the jargon of old, that the party must "continue to liberate our way of thinking... further unleash and develop the productive forces... and steadfastly take the road of prosperity for all".

The content was similar to Hu Jintao's outgoing speech last week. But it still sounded different when Xi Jinping warned "the problems among party members and cadres of corruption, taking bribes, being out of touch with the people, undue emphasis on formalities and bureaucracy must be addressed with great efforts".

Mr Xi tried to show he understands the bread-and-butter issues that most people care about. "Our people... yearn for better education, stable jobs, more satisfactory income, greater social security, improved medical and healthcare," he said.

Bo Zhiyue of the National University in Singapore says Xi Jinping will be a different type of leader.

"He has more personality. He is a regular person. He can work with anyone he meets. He is a very down-to-earth person. He is easy to get along with."

But, of course, substance and results will matter more than style. On that score there was no detail, no policy proposal, no idea how he will bring about the changes he talked of.

But if Mr Xi is able to connect with China's people in a way Mr Hu couldn't, that will be important. It may give him more room to carve out a political personality of his own that would give him more authority as leader.

What will matter, then, is what sort of vision he has for China: something we simply don't know.

There is, of course, a temptation to read too much into tiny things. A change of power in China is rare, it happens only once a decade. Every time there are hopes the new leaders will bring change.

A little more than a decade after the trauma of the Tiananmen massacre, when Hu Jintao came to power, he was seen as a possible reformer.

Now, though, as his decade has drawn to a close, his time is widely seen as a missed opportunity and attention has turned to the new generation.

Xi Jinping has risen to the top by keeping a low profile, says Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College in California.

"Very few people know about who China's new leader will be, what he thinks. It's very smart for any incoming leader not to show his cards, and he's very smart."

And he says the fact that Mr Xi is the first among equals in a new Standing Committee of seven will also make this leadership inherently conservative.

"The new leadership looks in all likelihood to be a carefully balanced coalition, and a carefully balanced coalition is not a structure that is conducive to very decisive policy making," he added.

The reduction in the Standing Committee from nine to seven men may make it easier to reach consensus and so take some tougher decisions. The past decade is widely seen as one of paralysis. But on that score, we'll have to see.

What we do know from the other six new leaders is that they seem to contain a balance - the product of months of secret negotiations and compromises.

Some are from the supposed Jiang Zemin faction, some from the Hu Jintao faction, some may be conservative-minded and unwilling to pursue reforms, others are more reformist economic managers.

There are "princelings" and those from more humble backgrounds.

The message to take away from this is that compromise and consensus seem to be the order of the day.

It is worth noting that the candidates said to be most in favour of reform, like Wang Yang and Li Yuanchao, did not make it into the final seven. Both are young enough that they could still be elevated to the Standing Committee in 2017.

But it means the final line-up is being seen as relatively conservative, and less inclined towards change.

However the five new members on the Standing Committee are all relatively old. They may all serve only one term and have to retire in five years' time. Xi Jinping and the new number two, Li Keqiang, will be around for 10 years.

So the day in five years' time, when Xi Jinping leads out the members of the next Standing Committee from behind that closed door, may be the day when he really cements his authority as China's leader.

China's authoritarian model is praised as more efficient and more nimble than sclerotic Western democracies. China, this view goes, is the future, while the West is in decline.

Many in China, though, are not so confident. There is a widespread sense that political reform has not kept pace with a changing China, and it needs to catch up.

So the question facing the Communist Party is: can it continue to keep China's 1.3 billion people effectively excluded from real power and continue to be successful?

There's no sign the party is willing to engage with those who want far-reaching change, like Liu Xiaobo, China's Nobel Peace Prize winner. He remains in jail, serving 11 years for calling for Western-style separation of powers.

But calls for reform are growing.

"People want rule of law. People want democracy and freedom," says Wu Qing, one of China's most famous civil-rights advocates.

"In the constitution it says people have freedom of speech, freedom of publication, and freedom of lots of things. And yet it is hard. But people are pushing for that."

She served on the local congresses in Beijing for two decades, a rare independent voice, until she was forced out last year. She says in modern China there must be checks and balances on the party: most already exist in its constitution, but they aren't enforced.

"We should have a constitutional court, the judiciary should be independent, and there should be a law to protect the freedom of information. That's what we need. And there should really be free elections at grass roots," she says.

Calling for more freedom, the people of Wukan expelled corrupt Communist officials from their village last year. Their revolt caught the imagination of many. It ended only when the Communist Party conceded, giving villagers a rare, free vote to choose new officials.

Now, to head off more such crises, the party is considering reform. But it has been talking about reform for a decade.

"In the past 10 years there has been no reform. There has been talk but no substantial reform, so people have a lot of expectations of the new leaders to take up this task," says Bo Zhiyue, of the National University of Singapore.

"The most serious issue the party faces now is a credibility crisis. In the past, people always said local officials are bad and corrupt while the top leaders are clean and liberal-minded. But now I think even top leaders have lost their credibility among people. That's serious."

Prof Bo says Xi Jinping has commissioned a report into Singapore, to learn how the city-state has become wealthy but kept a system where one party dominates.

"I don't think China will open itself up to a Western-style democracy system. China is opening up to a Singapore-style political-management system."

And he says that reform is urgently needed.

"The danger of not having any political reform in the next five years is that China's Communist Party will lose its credibility as a ruling party, and it will collapse in five to 10 years if they don't do anything," he says.

However, the Communist Party and its leaders are keen students of history, and of the way other Communist regimes have collapsed.

That makes them cautious, says Roderick MacFarquhar of Harvard University.

"They have taken a lesson from what happened under Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. He wanted to reform the party and make Communism stronger. The result was he brought it down," he says.

"In China they don't know which reform might be removing the stone that launches the avalanche. So everyone is reluctant to do anything."

And even if Xi Jinping wants bring about any serious political change, there are now major sectors of the Party opposed to it, says Prof MacFarquhar.

"I think there will be a very great consensus against any such change," he says.

"Because any kind of political reform that meant anything would mean lessening the power, privileges and perks for Communist Party members. And 83 million people did not join the Communist Party only for it to lose its privileges, perks and power."

Outside the party, though, many believe the need for reform is pressing. The artist Ai Weiwei has become one of the party's most vocal critics.

"It's really come to a point when people have completely lost their patience and trust. In this society, this kind of feeling is very deep and very broad," Mr Ai says.

But Mr Ai too has little confidence that the party can bring reform, and fears what that means.

"I really hope they can make the change. But if I tell my true feelings, I think they are incapable to do that," he says.

"I think if they don't make the change, they will bring the nation to a much more unstable condition. If China is not stable, the world will suffer from it."

The outgoing leadership has focussed its efforts on growing China's economy. The incoming leadership, many believe, must now focus on important reforms if they're to secure China's economic future.

So one of the major questions facing the next generation is how urgent they believe the need for change really is, and whether they will have the clout to push through reforms.

One view of China today is as a place of soaring superlatives, its economic achievements as impressive as the skyscrapers that now cluster in every major city.

Thirty years ago, China was one of the poorest countries on the planet. Today it's the world's second biggest economy, its biggest manufacturer, its biggest exporter, its biggest car market, with the biggest foreign exchange reserves of any nation.

To any visitor, China certainly looks impressive - its giant cities, bisected by multi-lane freeways, jammed with expensive foreign cars, its streets lined with global brand names.

The economy is expected to expand by over 7% this year, and the government believes will continue at that pace for several more years to come. So surely China's leaders should be happy, and stick with what's been a successful formula?

But they're not. All the talk in Beijing is of how things must be reformed - urgently - if they're to be sure of another decade of impressive growth.

For all its success, China today is a place where average incomes are still little more than those in Jamaica. It has a long way to go, raising incomes further and spreading wealth more evenly among its people.

China's export industries, for so long a mainstay of the economy, are not contributing to growth the way they used to. Visit the vast manufacturing areas along the coast and in many of the giant factories that churn out China's exports machines stand idle. Consumers in Europe and America just aren't buying.

As one factory boss said to me last month, wages for factory workers in China are now five times higher than in Vietnam, so he's moved all his labour-intensive work out of China. Many others have done the same.

Look a little closer at some of those skyscrapers, and not much work is happening on the building sites. China's leaders have been trying to cool property prices after they spiked upwards and construction, another major part of the economy, slowed sharply recently.

Instead, the government is still pumping money into networks of motorways and high-speed railways. Many are now being built through far-off, poorer regions. At some point, China will find that building more and more infrastructure has its limits.

Visit China's huge, new shopping malls and you find quite a lot of shops are empty, collecting dust. For all the wealth that's been created, spending by China's own citizens accounts for just a third of the economy - that's half the level of Western nations.

Consumer spending is growing at over 10% a year, but needs to keep growing faster than the rest of the economy if it's to become a bigger part of China's economic mix.

That's important because it will make China less dependent on exporting to other countries, and less reliant on those giant government projects.

Meanwhile, all the commanding heights of the economy are controlled by the Communist Party-led state. Giant state-owned banks, telecoms companies and electricity firms and many more enjoy massive and lucrative monopolies.

They suck-up wealth and capital which would otherwise go to more dynamic, private businesses.

So will China's incoming Communist leaders break up the huge state-owned enterprises? Will they reform China's financial system so loans flow to businesses that are most likely to make money, not just those with political clout?

Will they free up the banks so ordinary people have more places where they can invest their money and can earn a decent return on their savings?

Will they expand the current low level of pensions and health insurance so people enjoy genuine security and are inclined to spend more? Will they open up to increased foreign competition?

Will they, in short, limit the role of the state?

The trouble is that the Communist Party itself, and many of its most powerful figures and their families, profit personally from the wealth and privileges that flow from controlling so much of the economy.

Relaxing the party's grip may make economic growth more sustainable, but may also be resisted by some of the party's most important vested interests.

The talk is all about how urgent reforms are. The test of the new leadership will be whether they have the clout to push reforms through, or whether they will be hobbled by the party they lead.

But after six decades there are fears that the party is corroding from the inside, its ranks riddled with corruption.

On Friday, delegates from different provinces met in the Great Hall of the People, a day after their General Secretary Hu Jintao warned that corruption could lead to the fall of the party.

Mr Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao have delivered similar warnings before, so some dismiss this as hollow talk. But there is a feeling that corruption is undermining the party's legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary people.

At his provincial delegation's meeting on Friday, Yuan Chunqing, party secretary for Shanxi Province, told me that fighting corruption has in recent years had been an important task.

"We've now elevated it to a life-or-death issue for the party. But we believe we can control it, and people will support us because of the Communist Party's model behaviour," he said.

To encourage model behaviour, Shanxi's Communist bosses say they have been spying on party members using webcams, and demanding officials to study more Marxism-Leninism. It will make people more virtuous, they say.

What has pushed the issue to the fore at this congress has been the downfall of Bo Xilai.

Not so long ago a contender for the party's new leadership, he is now under arrest awaiting trial and accused of massive corruption. His alleged crimes were exposed after his wife admitted killing British businessman Neil Heywood.

In China today it is harder for the party to hide abuses of power. In the 10 years that the outgoing leaders have been in power, the number of internet users in China has grown tenfold to more than 500 million.

The internet is giving people a tool to both scrutinise the party and vent their anger about corruption.

Li Xinde runs an anti-corruption website. His site has to be hosted on servers outside China, but he has exposed and brought down many corrupt party members.

He showed me video of a demonstration against land-grabbing officials which he posted on his site recently. Police are seen dragging protesters away and kicking them.

"It used to be that individuals were corrupt. Now it's whole groups of officials," says Mr Li.

"The system is crippled. Nobody's accountable. If we don't find ways to mend it, the problem will only become more serious."

Most damaging of all for the Communist Party have been recent reports about the extraordinary wealth amassed by the relatives of party leaders, even though there was no suggestion of corruption in those cases.

Relatives of Xi Jinping, who is about to take over as the party's new leader, were estimated by Bloomberg News, in June, to have more than $370m (£230m) of assets.

While the New York Times last week reported that the extended family of Wen Jiabao had over $2.5bn of assets under their control.

Both news organisations have since had all access to their websites blocked in China.

Lawyers for Mr Wen's family issued a statement denying any wrongdoing, calling the New York Times' story "untrue".

Roderick MacFarquhar, professor of government at Harvard University, says the wealth may have been acquired legitimately, but it is embarrassing for the party.

"As Hu Jintao and other leaders before him said, you cannot have the country run by massive kleptocracy, because one day people will get tired of this," he said.

"The urban bourgeoisie turned away from Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists because their regime was so corrupt. The Communist Party simply cannot afford for that to happen."

But while the party worries that corruption could be fatal, it may also be unable to stop it. It is not clear whether a party that is unwilling to submit to any outside control can clean itself up.

That he had "spy links" is, in many ways no surprise. It would have been more surprising if MI6 had not bothered to talk to him.

His business dealings with Bo Xilai's family would have been of definite interest to British intelligence.

But it seems that while "useful", Neil Heywood was not a particularly high-profile source.

It is significant that he was never "tasked" with discovering any specific information.

He seems to have been the sort of person an intelligence officer would chat to every now and again, trying to glean something interesting, not more than that.

So in no sense was Neil Heywood a spy himself.

But there are questions that arise.

The BBC understands that Gu Kailai, who murdered Neil Heywood in Chongqing, told the city's police chief that the man she had killed was "a spy".

Why did she think so? Did it affect her motive? Importantly too, did China's authorities know there was a British informant close to a Politburo member?

And finally, when did MI6 discover that their "source" had died in Chongqing? It took British diplomats three months to ask China to investigate the death which had been put down to a "heart attack" or "excessive alcohol".

Did the intelligence services suspect foul play earlier given Neil Heywood's connections?

Should they have alerted other parts of the British government that a British citizen they had used as an informant had died in circumstances that may be suspicious?

His business dealings with Bo Xilai's family would have been of definite interest to British intelligence. But it seems that while "useful", Neil Heywood was not a particularly high-profile source. It is significant that he was never "tasked" with discovering any specific information.

He seems to have been the sort of person an intelligence officer would chat to every now and again, trying to glean something interesting, not more than that.

Men thread their way through the patchwork of fields, balancing heavy sheaves of rice just harvested from poles slung across their shoulders.

Numerous denim factories have created jobs in the town of Xintiang - but residents say they have also polluted some of the town's rivers.

China's leaders have been responding. By slowing growth down to less than 8% a year and trying to "rebalance" the economy towards service industries and consumer spending they hope to create more jobs and encourage spending. They have called for minimum wages to rise by more than 10% a year until 2015. They say they have almost completed a national pension scheme covering all rural areas for the first time.