For one whole week, thousands of delegates filed into the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Beijing to attend one of the most important events on the Chinese political calendar. With Xi Jinping firmly at the helm, the National People's Congress, which concluded on Thursday, is an annual statement on where China is headed - and how it plans to get there. But absent from the meticulously choreographed proceedings were some of Xi's formerly trusted confidants, and other high-ranking officials -