The men and women who command the heights of China’s economy are on the defensive at a meeting that will set the direction and tone of the country’s new leadership for a decade.

Senior executives from large state-owned enterprises joined governors, generals and ministers as the 376 full and alternate members of the Chinese Communist party’s 18th Central Committee gathered in Beijing at the weekend. Of these four constituencies, it is China’s SOE managers who have attracted the most scrutiny in the run-up to committee’s “third plenum”, which opened on Saturday.

SOE bosses are selected by the party and have been required over recent months to join in exhaustive rounds of “criticism and self-criticism” under orders from Xi Jinping, China’s president and party general secretary.