Beijing ? China set the date Sunday for its Communist Party national congress, a watershed event expected to position a new generation of leaders for the world’s most populous nation as it undergoes wrenching economic and social change.

The 16th National Party Congress was scheduled for Nov. 8, when President Jiang Zemin, 76, is expected to turn over the leadership of Communist Party to his designated successor, Vice President Hu Jintao.

Diplomatic sources say the congress had been scheduled for September and they suspect it was pushed back because Jiang is trying to maintain influence even as he hands over power.

The suspicions have been strengthened by the fact that China’s leaders have said remarkably little about the matter in past weeks.

The November date means Jiang still will be president, party secretary general and head of key party and state military commissions when he visits North America in late October.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency, announcing the date, said the congress the first in five years was “extremely important” and would “gird for battle and deploy for the great engineering task of advancing party construction.”

The gathering will elect a new Central Committee for the party as well as members of an influential body for punishing corruption and other ills, Xinhua said.

Most of the top members of the Central Committee are expected to step down and be replaced by younger men.

The Communist Party’s Political Bureau suggested the Nov. 8 date, which must still be approved by the governing Central Committee. But it was unlikely the date would change, since such important decisions typically are set by consensus after long private discussions. Such congresses can run anywhere from a few days to two weeks or longer.

Jiang is not expected to step down from the presidency before the annual meeting of China’s parliament in spring. But before that happens, November’s party congress appeared ready to cement his legacy.

Xinhua said the congress will sum up work done over the last five years, and “comprehensively carry out the important thoughts of ‘Three Represents”‘ the political theory of party modernization that Jiang is believed to want written into the party’s constitution.

The theory lays down three messages: the Communist Party has to keep up with modern China, embrace the new economic and professional elite and even offer membership to the very entrepreneurs that it once reviled.

Giving it the party stamp would put Jiang on an ideological par with former leader Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong, the founder of communist China.

Jiang is due to visit President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch Oct. 25 and attend a meeting of Asian-Pacific leaders in Mexico before returning for the congress.