Tiananmen Square has been transformed into a theme park with palm trees, models of the Great Wall and gushing new fountains, as Beijing marks the Chinese Communist Party's 15th Congress, which begins tomorrow morning.
The 2,000 delegates arriving into the spruced-up capital will be asked to endorse what could be one of the largest privatisation programmes the world has ever seen, involving the transfer of giant money-losing state enterprises into share-ownership.
In his opening speech to the congress tomorrow, which will determine the nation's economic and political destiny until 2002, the Communist Party Secretary, Mr Jiang Zemin, is expected to propose radical reform aimed at selling off, merging or closing down all but 1,000 of the state sector's 370,000 enterprises.
The 71-year-old Chinese President will not use the word "privatisation", which would be at odds with the rhetoric of communism. But big changes are in the air. Throughout China, people expect the congress to usher in a new era of economic reform. After each of the last four congresses - 1977, 1982, 1987 and 1992 - liberalisation of the economy took a giant stride forward.
Experiments in turning sluggish state-owned firms into joint stock companies by issuing vouchers or shares to workers have already been conducted in the city of Zhucheng in Shandong province. There, officials predict that as soon as the congress is over next week, privatisation of all but the largest of its 288 enterprises will begin immediately.
"What will happen next is privatisation, because everyone now knows the most successful companies are privately owned," a factory manager said recently.
For weeks, the media have been preparing the country for the next stage in capitalist-style reforms. The Workers Daily told its readers bluntly that state-owned enterprises wasted bank loans and had become a bottomless pit into which capital was being thrown.
It said a survey of 124,000 enterprises showed their asset-liability ratio had reached 71.5 per cent and that if hidden losses were taken into account, the actual ratio was closer to 83.3 per cent. In developed countries, the average ratio was more likely to be 40 to 50 per cent, it said. Debts accumulated by industrial concerns totalled almost $100 billion.
Banks report that the turnover of floating capital is slowing while losses are widening, and all new loans are being deployed to cover fresh losses. In these circumstances, party leaders have little option but to contemplate bold measures, especially as the growing army of unemployed and workers without wages in floundering industries threaten stability.
There appears to be unity on the need for reform but disagreement over the pace of change, and a lingering power struggle over personnel still apparently dogs the party leadership, despite the sentiments expressed in a giant flower arrangement in Tiananmen Square: which spells out the words: "All of one heart and one mind".
This is the first congress in 20 years to determine the country's future course without the guiding hand of Deng Xiaoping, who died in February. Unable to turn to a supreme arbiter for help, the leadership has had difficulty sorting out thorny problems, such as a new top job for the Prime Minister, Mr Li Peng, when his term expires in mid-1998, according to diplomatic observers.
"The difference between the 15th party congress and all those held before is that now we lack a god," the Chinese author, Wang Shan, said yesterday. "We lack a great leader who can be widely recognised as the leader."
A new generation of younger members is seeking places in the 200-strong Central Committee and on the ruling Politburo, which currently has 18 members and two alternates, while an old guard of Maoists has been trying to salvage communist ideals in the face of the rush towards market economics.
Besides Tiananmen Square, where laser displays light up the night sky, other parts of Beijing are en fete for the congress. Along 4 km of the city's main thoroughfare, coloured lights have been draped overhead like curtains.
An exhibition illustrating the "five glorious years" since the last congress has opened to the delight of "excited crowds", as the Evening News put it. Slogans hung from flyovers and apartment blocks proclaim the victory of Deng's policies of economic reform.