China unveiled Wednesday a new leadership team stacked with President Xi Jinping's trusted allies, but without an apparent successor, as he amasses even greater power and embarks on his second term.

Li Zhanshu, 67, essentially President Xi Jinping's chief of staff, is one of the five new members of the Communist Party's highest decision-making body.

The members of the seven-strong Politburo Standing Committee, China's apex of power, were brought out before the media by Xi in a room inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, a day after the ruling party concluded its twice-a-decade congress.

The four others who joined Xi and Premier Li Keqiang on the committee are Vice Premier Wang Yang, Wang Huning, chief policy adviser to Xi and his predecessors, Zhao Leji, head of the party's Central Organization Department, another confidant of the current leader, and Shanghai party boss Han Zheng.

All men are in their 60s and believed to be ineligible to succeed Xi after his second term ends in five years.

The party did not promote to the committee two senior members in their 50s, seen as potential future leader candidates.

The two are Guangdong party boss Hu Chunhua and Chen Min'er, a rising political star known as a Xi loyalist, who became party chief of the mega-city of Chongqing in July.

With the absence of a promising candidate, speculation further intensifies that the 64-year-old Xi will be at the helm of the party beyond 2022.

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Xi's right-hand man Wang Qishan was not included in the party's new 204-member Central Committee that was formed Tuesday, meaning he will no longer wield authority at its top echelon of power.

For Xi, the makeup of the standing committee and other central organs in his first term were a compromise influenced by his two immediate predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin.

When Xi rose to the top party position, he had few confidants around him. But he managed to sideline his political rivals through an aggressive anti-corruption campaign, with the help of 69-year-old Wang as its enforcer.

Ahead of the leadership reshuffle, there was speculation Xi might bend the party's informal retirement age to keep the graft buster by his side.

But Xi opted not to touch the unwritten norm, under which all members of the standing committee aged 68 or older at the time of a party congress must step down.

Despite Wang's departure, Xi managed to create a more favorable structure for him to tighten his grip over the world's most populous country, offering a number of posts to his followers in the wider Politburo.

Wang also could assume a key government position in the near future.