FACTBOX-China's 17th Communist Party Congress

(Reuters) - China's Communist Party has opened its 17th Congress. For stories on the Congress click on. Here are some key facts:

- - - -

AGENDA

-- The five-yearly Congress elects more than 350 full and alternate members of the elite Central Committee in a session lasting about one week, drawing from a pre-selected pool of candidates only slightly larger than the number of seats.

-- The new Central Committee's first session the day after the Congress ends then selects some two dozen members of the decision-making Politburo, again drawing from a list of candidates already selected by the party's leadership over months of political jockeying. This year for the first time the number of candidates may be greater than the available seats.

-- The new Politburo Standing Committee, the Party's top echelon of power which currently has eight members, will be unveiled when they meet the press after the one-day session ends.

-- Hu Jintao is set to win a second five-year term as Party general secretary. The key test for Hu, who is also state president and military chief, will be how many allies he can promote to the Standing Committee and the Politburo and whether he can name an heir apparent amid intense factional jockeying.

POLICIES

-- Hu is giving a keynote report to the opening session of the Congress, appraising the Party's work over the past five years and mapping out policy initiatives for the next five years.

VENUES AND DURATION

-- The Congress will close on Sunday, October 21.

-- The delegates will convene at Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People for full sessions, but most group meetings -- where delegates will discuss Hu's report and the list of candidates -- will take place behind closed doors at a hotel.

DELEGATES

-- The Party was founded at the first Congress in Shanghai in 1921 when 13 delegates, including a young Mao Zedong, represented the less than 60 Marxist activists across the country. The Party swept to power in the 1949 revolution after a bloody civil war.

-- The 17th Congress is a gathering of China's most powerful people: incumbent state leaders, cabinet ministers, top generals, provincial Party chiefs and governors, mayors of major cities as well as managers of large state-owned enterprises.

-- A total of 2,213 delegates are attending this year's Congress.

-- About 30 percent of the delegates were carefully selected by regional officials as "grassroots" role models from all walks of life, including farmers, workers, teachers, doctors and scientists. The Party has more than 73 million members.

-- There are also some 20 private entrepreneurs among the delegates, Chinese media say, compared with the seven attending the 16th Congress when the Party opened its doors to capitalists.

-- Celebrity delegates include China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, and table tennis world champion Zhang Yining.