Here are two articles from the Guardian looking at the dramatic changes in China’s constitution which have removed the limit on the President’s tenure in office to two terms of five years. The President in the Chinese political system is formally a limited position with mostly ceremonial powers. However, since 1993 the President has also been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, making it the de facto center of Chinese political power. This change represents a reversal of the policy implemented after the death of Chairman Mao, which was intended to split up and limit power in the Chinese political system.
- “Jude Blanchette, an expert in Chinese politics from New York’s Conference Board research group, said: “It’s amazing. I just did not think this was possible. I just thought it was way too aggressive and bold [a move] and unnecessarily so.
- “It’s an unequivocal signal that Xi Jinping has designs to stay on past 2023. I don’t think there is any other way to read it other than the four-decade long project that Deng Xiaoping initiated to set hard term limits on power to make sure that a Mao figure never came back is being dismantled.
- “You just need to look a few thousand miles to the west in Russia to see what this
- potentially looks like”
This is another step in Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power:
- “Yet a man whose family was so deeply scarred by the excesses of Maoism is dismantling the changes designed to safeguard his party and country against further such disasters. After the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s successors resolved that never again should one person hold such power. Deng Xiaoping, and other survivors such as Xi’s father, sought to institutionalise politics. Their ideas were not codified, but they were crucial in limiting the power of the leader by setting a term limit and ensuring authority was exercised collectively.
- Xi has ripped up this unwritten rulebook. He is in charge, full stop. This week he became the only living leader since Mao to have his ideology enshrined in the party constitution under his name. His ideas are recorded as “Xi Jinping Thought”, on a par with Mao Zedong Thought, rather than Deng’s slightly less elevated “Theory”.”
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