Women a rare sight in China's corridors of power

BEIJING (Reuters) - There are women to be found in China's halls of power, but most of them are serving tea.

Nearly 60 years after Mao Zedong's Communists came to power championing women as an economic force, giving them rights to hold land and seek divorce, few have risen through the political ranks to reach the top.

When the Communist Party's 17th Congress ended on Sunday, Vice Premier Wu Yi, known as China's "Iron Lady" for her toughness in trade talks and crisis management, was not on the new Central Committee list -- a sign she was retiring.

The lack of women among those in contention is more obvious than ever.

"You can't simply say it's about traditional ideas and culture, or simply about China's political system," said Feng Yuan, the gender and women's rights coordinator at ActionAid, a non-governmental organization.

"Because in reality, those traditional concepts and the political system influence and reinforce each other."

No woman has ever served on the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee, and Wu was the only woman on the outgoing 24-member Politburo, ranked one notch below the Standing Committee.

Before her, just three women had been full Politburo members, and all were wives of top leaders, including Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, the leader of the Gang of Four jailed for her radical stance during the Cultural Revolution. She committed suicide in 1991.

"Women received a real setback when Jiang Qing became so prominent. People saw it as proof that women shouldn't be in Chinese politics," said Christina Gilmartin, an expert on gender in modern China at Northeastern University in Boston.

Wu's example helped redress the balance, Gilmartin said, but her status did not mark a sea change.

Decades after Mao famously announced that "women hold up half the sky", they make up about 20 percent of the current parliament and comprise less than 8 percent of the elite Central Committee.

With Wu due to step down as vice premier next March, attention is beginning to shift down the line to female cadres who might be in contention for the top echelons of power.

The most likely candidate for Politburo status -- and a remote possibility for Standing Committee -- is Liu Yandong, a senior Party official responsible for winning over non-Communists who is said to be close to President Hu Jintao.

"She's relatively young and she's a woman," Zhiyue Bo, a China scholar at St John Fisher College in New York, said of Liu, who was born in 1945.

"She's associated with Hu and the Youth League. She's also a princeling," he said, referring to the sons and daughters of earlier generations of leaders. Liu's father was vice minister of agriculture Liu Ruilong.

The Communist Youth League is seen as Hu's power base and the number of leaders with backgrounds linked to the group is rising.

(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim)