Rapturous applause greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping as he took the stage on Sunday at the start of a carefully choreographed Communist Party Congress expected to confirm him as the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Around 2,300 delegates gathered in Beijing’s imposing Great Hall of the People, bedecked in the party’s signature red and gold with banners bearing slogans hailing the “great, glorious and correct Chinese Communist Party”. Xi’s opening speech came after a minute’s silence for deceased party heroes, such as Mao and his successor Deng Xiaoping, and a live military b…