On his first trip as the Chinese Communist party’s newly installed general secretary, Xi Jinping travelled to the southern city of Shenzhen in December 2012 and laid a wreath at a larger-than-life bronze statue of Deng Xiaoping.

Mr Xi’s homage to Deng, who used Shenzhen as a test-bed for his historic economic reforms, appeared to signal continuity with the policies of modern China’s founding father. “The Communist party must stick to the correct path of reform and opening up,” Mr Xi said. “We must be unwavering on the road to a prosperous country and people.”

As Mr Xi prepares to preside over a party congress starting on Wednesday that will mark the start of his second term in office, the question is whether China’s leader intends to use his power to continue the Deng legacy of “opening up” or whether he will instead pursue a narrower agenda of defending the position of the ruling party and his own allies.