China’s Vice President Xi Jinping was appointed as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the Communist Party on Monday, eventually being confirmed as China’s next leader.

According to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, 57-year-old Xi was promoted to the second-most powerful military post in the country on the last day of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee of China’s Communist Party. Experts regard it as paving the way for Xi to succeed President Hu Jintao in 2012.　In his new post, Xi will be able to strengthen his military power base and “learn the ropes of the commission.”

　　U.S. experts to visit Pyongyang

A group of U.S. experts on Korea will privately visit Pyongyang in the coming weeks, the State Department announced Monday.

However, the group, led by Jack Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute, will not carry any specific message from the U.S. government, spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.

“Mr. Pritchard has given us a head’s-up that he is about to head to North Korea in the next couple of weeks,” Crowley said.

Pritchard who served as the U.S. special envoy to North Korea during the George W. Bush administration, visited North Korea earlier this year to meet with officials there to exchange views on the six-party talks.

Voice of America (VOA) reported last Friday that North Korea invited them in a bid to engineer talks with the U.S. government. Siegfried Hecker, the co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Joel Witt of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Susan Shirk, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, and Tony Namgoong, an assistant to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, are reportedly included in the expert group.