The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, already considered the country’s most dominant since Mao Zedong, looks to have further cemented his grip on power after Beijing unveiled plans to scrap the presidency’s two-term limit.

China’s official news agency, Xinhua, announced the dramatic news on Sunday in a bland 36-word dispatch. It paves the way for Xi to remain in power well into the next decade and perhaps even beyond.

The report said the Communist party’s 205-member central committee had proposed China’s constitution be modified so that it no longer contained a section stipulating that the president and vice-president “shall serve no more than two consecutive [five-year] terms”.



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.”

Bill Bishop, the publisher of the Sinocism newsletter on Chinese politics, said: “This is Putin-plus.

“It means that so long as Xi is alive and the Communist party of China is in power then Xi is going to be the most powerful man in China. And unlike Mao he is going to be the most powerful man at a time when China is at its most powerful point in several hundred years and is only getting more powerful.”

Steve Tsang, the director of the Soas China Institute, said: “It means what it says on the tin. It’s now official that he’s not going to stand down … welcome to Xi Jinping’s brave new era.

“The message [from Xi] is: ‘I can do it, I will do it, don’t even think about challenging it!’”



The growing supremacy of Xi, 64, who took power in late 2012, was underlined in a second Xinhua report that announced a body of political philosophy bearing his name, Xi Jinping Thought, would also be written into China’s constitution. The philosophy was added to the Communist party’s charter last October, a move experts said effectively anointed Xi as China’s most powerful leader since Mao, who ruled between 1949 and his death in 1976.

Blanchette said it was impossible to see the central committee’s proposal not being green-lit by China’s parliament, the national people’s congress, when it convened early next month. “I think that’s about as likely as me winning an Olympic gold medal,” Blanchette said.

However, Xi faced an extraordinarily complex set of domestic and international challenges, including increasingly fraught US-China relations, the North Korean crisis and China’s own economic situation.



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“It’s still premature to say Xi Jinping has become some Sun God emperor who will stay on for life, because a lot of that depends on what China looks like in 2020 and 2021,” Blanchette said.



“But I think barring anything catastrophic ... I think it’s a pretty good bet to say that Xi Jinping is going to be the dominant force in Chinese politics for at least the next decade.”



Joshua Wong, the Hong Kong pro-democracy leader, said the news confirmed the onset of “the era of Emperor Xi”.



Tsang predicted that Xi would now remain in power “for as long as he wants to or feels he needs to”. “As long as he enjoys sufficiently good health he will stay on.”</s>On Sunday, the China's Communist Party Central Committee proposed to amend China's Constitution to remove the two-term limit for Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the People's Republic. The amendment is sure to be approved when the National People's Congress convenes for its annual session on March 5. The Constitution can be amended by a two-thirds vote of the nearly 3,000 members of the Congress.

The National People's Congress is dominated by the Communist Party and is widely viewed as a rubber-stamp body. The success of the proposed amendment is all but assured. If passed, it will allow Chinese President Xi Jinping to stay in office indefinitely.

In the absence of a Constitutional amendment, Xi would have to step down from the Presidency in 2023. He was first elected in 2013 by a vote of 2,952-1, and is certain to be reelected this year to a second five year term. Speculation is that the one vote against Xi Jinping in 2013's secret ballot was... Xi Jinping himself. He may have cast the vote as a form of democratic window-dressing.

In addition to the office of President, Xi also holds the posts of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, neither of which carries any term limit. That puts him in charge of the state, the Party, and the army, potentially in perpetuity. In December, the national armed police were put under the Central Military Commission as well. Formally as well as informally, Xi is set to hold all the major reins of power in China for as long as he chooses.

In recent years, China has often been held up as a successful model of authoritarian government, non-democratic but nonetheless meritocratic and effective. The major foundations of China's authoritarian meritocracy were supposedly its traditions of collective leadership and rotation in power. These helped China avoid the pitfalls of strongman rule that are so common in other communist and post-communist societies.

There have always been doubts about whether or not that consensus-driven model would outlive China's first post-Mao leader, Deng Xiaoping. After the death of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong in 1976, there was a tussle for power with massive implications for the future direction of China. On one side were the so-called Gang of Four (led by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing), who planned to continue Mao's legacy. Opposing them were a group of reformers organized around Mao's junior contemporary, sometimes partner, and frequent competitor Deng Xiaoping.</s>(BEIJING) — China’s ruling Communist Party has proposed scrapping term limits for the country’s president, the official news agency said Sunday, appearing to lay the groundwork for party leader Xi Jinping to rule as president beyond 2023.

The party’s Central Committee proposed to remove from the constitution the expression that China’s president and vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms,” the Xinhua News Agency said.

“Xi Jinping has finally achieved his ultimate goal when he first embarked on Chinese politics — that is to be the Mao Zedong of the 21st century,” said Willy Lam, a political analyst at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, referring to the founder of communist China.

Xi, 64, cemented his status as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao in the 1970s at last year’s twice-a-decade Communist Party congress, where his name and a political theory attributed to him were added to the party constitution as he was given a second five-year term as general secretary.

It was the latest move by the party signaling Xi’s willingness to break with tradition and centralize power under him. Xi has taken control of an unusually wide range of political, economic and other functions, a break with the past two decades of collective leadership.

“What is happening is potentially very dangerous because the reason why Mao Zedong made one mistake after another was because China at the time was a one-man show,” Lam said. “For Xi Jinping, whatever he says is the law. There are no longer any checks and balances.”

Xi is coming to the end of his first five-year term as president and is set to be appointed to his second term at an annual meeting of the rubber-stamp parliament that starts March 5. The proposal to end term limits will likely be approved at that meeting.

Term limits on officeholders have been in place since they were included in the 1982 constitution, when lifetime tenure was abolished.

Political analysts said the party would likely seek to justify the proposed removal of the presidential term limit by citing Xi’s vision of establishing a prosperous, modern society by 2050.

“The theoretical justification for removing tenure limits is that China requires a visionary, capable leader to see China through this multi-decade grand plan,” Lam said.

“But the other aspect of it could just be Mao Zedong-like megalomania; he is just convinced that he is fit to be an emperor for life,” he said.

Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based political commentator, said while Xi might need an extra five-year term or two to carry out his plans, the country is unlikely to return to an era of lifetime tenure for heads of state.

“President Xi may be in a leading position for a relatively long time,” Hu said. “This is beneficial to pushing forward reforms and the fight against corruption, but it’s impossible for China to have lifetime tenure again.”

“We have drawn profound lessons from the system of lifetime tenures,” Hu said, referring to the chaos and turmoil of Mao’s 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.

Xi’s image dominates official propaganda, prompting suggestions that he is trying to build a cult of personality, and evoking memories of the upheaval of that era. Party spokespeople reject such talk, insisting Xi is the core of its seven-member Standing Committee, not a lone strongman.

At last year’s party congress, Xi hailed a “new era” under his leadership and laid out his vision of a ruling party that serves as the vanguard for everything from defending national security to providing moral guidance to ordinary Chinese. At the close of the congress, the party elevated five new officials to assist Xi on his second five-year term, but stopped short of designating an obvious successor to him.

Political analysts said the absence of an apparent successor pointed to Xi’s longer-term ambitions.

Sunday’s announcement on term limits came before the Central Committee was to begin a three-day meeting in Beijing on Monday to discuss major personnel appointments and other issues.

The son of a famed communist elder, Xi rose through the ranks to the position of Shanghai’s party leader before being promoted to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee in 2007.

When Xi did assume the top spot in 2012, it was as head of a reduced seven-member committee on which he had only one reliable ally, veteran Wang Qishan. He put Wang in charge of a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown that helped Xi eliminate challengers, both serving and retired, and cow potential opponents.

Xi, whose titles include head of the armed forces, has lavished attention on the military with parades and defense budget increases. But he’s also led a crackdown on abuses and a push to cut 300,000 personnel from the 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army, underscoring his ability to prevail against entrenched interests.</s>After the assassination attempt on US president Ronald Reagan in March 1981, vice-president George H.W. Bush stepped into the breach, famously telling a military aide as he sped towards Washington that “only the president lands on the south lawn”.

But the concept of a vice-president would probably have confused many Chinese because the country did not even have a president at the time.

The 1975 constitution that was in force, dubbed the Cultural Revolution constitution, deliberately omitted the posts of state chairman and state vice-chairman – the previous equivalents of president and vice-president – because supreme leader Mao Zedong was worried a president would be regarded as his heir apparent.

Will Wang Qishan become Xi Jinping’s go-to man as Chinese vice-president?

Mao died in 1976, but it was not until 1983 that constitutional revisions revived the posts of state chairman and his deputy.

The titles later morphed into president and vice-president but they carried nowhere near the significance of their American equivalents, with that of the vice-president, in particular, waxing and waning with the political tide.

With President Xi Jinping’s trusted aide and former anti-graft tsar Wang Qishan set to become China’s next vice-president at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, next month, the office is likely to once again emerge from the ceremonial shadows.

With the office of vice-president being relatively powerless in China, Deng Yuwen, a former deputy editor of a newspaper affiliated with the Central Party School, said its actual power largely depended on party politics.

“The law gives the vice-president little beyond nominal status,” he said. “The president is a nominal title, and the vice-president is even more so.

“A vice-president’s power is largely dependent on the holder’s status in the party, and whether he holds other titles in the party, such as the top policymaker on Hong Kong and Macau affairs, or the party’s ideology chief.”

Wang Qishan still attending top Communist Party meetings and in line for China’s vice-presidency

During Bush’s two terms as vice-president – from 1981 to 1989 – China saw its first two vice-presidents since the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Both were veterans of the earlier revolution that brought the Communist Party to power.

According to China’s constitution, the country’s vice-presidents look a lot like their American counterparts. When authorised by the president, the vice-president could perform some presidential duties, it says, such as confirming the appointment of a premier, signing laws or declaring war following legislative approval. It also says the vice-president would be acting president in the president’s absence.

However, Chinese vice-presidents have never done any of those things.

China’s constitution, unlike the US version, does not say what should happen if a president is unable to discharge their powers and duties. The United States has seen a vice-president step in as acting president three times – each for a matter of hours – but that has never happened in China.

Ulanhu, an ethnic Mongolian and a veteran communist revolutionary, became China’s vice-president in 1983, when the president was Li Xiannian. Five years later, when Yang Shangkun became president, Ulanhu was succeeded as vice-president by party elder Wang Zhen, known for his ironhanded rule of restive Xinjiang.

Ulanhu was 77 when he assumed office and Wang Zhen 80. After decades of service in the military and the state administration, their vice-presidencies involved little work beyond receiving foreign guests at welcoming ceremonies, and neither led a delegation to a foreign country as vice-president. More important diplomatic events were left to paramount leader Deng Xiaoping or younger cadres.

Wang Zhen’s voice did matter in China’s elite politics, but only because he was one of the party’s “Eight Immortals”, elders who in the 1980s met as the Central Advisory Commission and pulled all the strings behind the scenes.

Wang Zhen visited the US in 1985, three years before he became vice-president, and met then US vice-president Bush, but his formal title at the time was president of the Central Party School.

After the West turned its back on China following the military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989, China picked Rong Yiren, a prominent businessman dubbed the “Red Capitalist”, as its vice-president in 1993. Rong was only revealed to have been a party member after his death in 2005.

When Dick Cheney, sworn in as US vice-president in 2001, rose to become the most powerful holder of that office, he was able to meet two Chinese counterparts representing two other types of Chinese vice-president.

Cheney met then vice-president Hu Jintao in Washington in 2002, when Hu had already been designated China’s next top leader by Deng. Hu’s five-year vice-presidency was intended to prepare him to succeed president Jiang Zemin and increase his exposure to foreign leaders.

After Hu became president in 2003, vice-president Zeng Qinghong became Cheney’s Chinese counterpart. Zeng’s background as the son of a renowned revolutionary and his close ties with Jiang diluted Hu’s power, even though Zeng was too old to challenge for the top position himself.

When Zeng proposed retiring as the party’s ideology chief and state vice-president in 2007, he was powerful enough to broker a deal that traded his retirement for a Politburo Standing Committee seat for Xi, giving the younger man the platform from which to aim higher.

Xi’s vice-presidency followed a similar path to Hu’s. During a visit to the US in February 2012, nine months before he became party leader, Xi was accompanied by US vice-president Joe Biden throughout the trip and also met celebrities such as basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson and soccer player David Beckham.

Though Xi was a powerful figure in the party, he never sought to challenge Hu’s polices or stand out from his Politburo Standing Committee colleagues during his five-year vice-presidency, which ended when he succeed Hu as president in 2013.

China’s vice-presidency was then reduced to a ceremonial role once again, with Li Yuanchao, a Hu ally, filling in the post. Li Yuanchao became the first vice-president in 15 years not to be a member of the party’s innermost Politburo Standing Committee, which kept him out of the loop on top-level decisions.

Li, who turned 67 in November, stepped down from the 25-member Politburo after the party’s national congress in October even though he had not yet reached the party’s unofficial retirement age.

Does Chinese leader Xi Jinping plan to hang on to power for more than 10 years?

If as expected, Wang Qishan succeeds Li Yuanchao as vice-president next month, it will be a break with a pattern dating back two decades. Hu, a presidential heir apparent, was succeeded by Zeng, a close ally of the previous president. Heir apparent Xi and Li Yuanchao, a weaker Hu ally, repeated that pattern, but Wang Qishan’s appointment would appear to have more in common with the earlier preference for vice-presidents who were trusted party elders. It would also mean there would be no heir apparent identified for Xi as he begins his second five-year term as president.

The party’s Central Committee has called for the constitution to be amended to remove a restriction limiting the president and vice-president to two consecutive terms.</s>CHINA’S ruling Communist Party has proposed scrapping term limits for the country’s president, the official news agency says, appearing to lay the groundwork for party leader Xi Jinping to rule as president beyond 2023.

The party’s Central Committee proposed to remove from the constitution the expression that China’s president and vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms”, the Xinhua News Agency said on Sunday.

“Xi Jinping has finally achieved his ultimate goal when he first embarked on Chinese politics — that is to be the Mao Zedong of the 21st century,” said Willy Lam, a political analyst at the Chinese University in Hong Kong.

Xi, 64, cemented his status as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao in the 1970s at last year’s twice-a-decade Communist Party congress, where his name and a political theory attributed to him were added to the party constitution as he was given a second five-year term as general secretary.

It was the latest move by the party signalling Xi’s willingness to break with tradition and centralise power under him. Xi has taken control of an unusually wide range of political, economic and other functions, a break with the past two decades of collective leadership.

“What is happening is potentially very dangerous because the reason why Mao Zedong made one mistake after another was because China at the time was a one-man show,” Lam said. “For Xi Jinping, whatever he says is the law. There are no longer any checks and balances.” Xi is coming to the end of his first five-year term as president and is set to be appointed to his second term at an annual meeting of the rubberstamp parliament that starts March 5.

The proposal to end term limits will likely be approved at that meeting.

Political analysts said the party would likely seek to justify the proposed removal of the presidential term limit by citing Xi’s vision of establishing a prosperous, modern society by 2050.

Sunday’s announcement on term limits came before the Central Committee was to begin a three-day meeting in Beijing on Monday to discuss major personnel appointments and other issues.

The son of a famed communist elder, Xi rose through the ranks to the position of Shanghai’s party leader before being promoted to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee in 2007.

When Xi did assume the top spot in 2012, it was as head of a reduced seven-member committee on which he had only one reliable ally, veteran Wang Qishan. He put Wang in charge of a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown that helped Xi eliminate challengers, both serving and retired, and cow potential opponents.</s>In an unprecedented decision, Chinese Communist Party has removed Presidential term limit. The decision will allow China’s most powerful leader in decades, Xi Jinping to lead the Asian giant up to the year 2023. Along with the president, the changed constitution of Communist Party will also be applied to the Vice President. 64-year-old Xi Jinping is leading China since the year 2013 and would have to leave the President seat under the current system. The new proposed system will allow the president to serve the country for more than 2 consecutive terms of 5 years.

The new change will be submitted to the lawmakers at the annual full session of the National People’s Congress going to start on March 5. Xi Jinping is following Den Xiaoping ideology of collective model of leadership. The current chief of Communist Party of India has hinted at bigger dreams after a major change. His previous two predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao had served for 2 years 5 terms. This is not the first time that Chinese Communist Party has proposed some changes to the constitution, Last year in annual Congress October party unveiled a new 7 member Standing Committee.

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The party has also proposed to include Xi’s thought to the national constitution. After taking over a party general secretary, Xi has started a war against the corruption, which helped the country to improve its corruption perception ranking by Transparency International. The Central Committee has also proposed listing the National Supervisory Commission as a new organ in the Constitution.

Last October during annual Congress feared former head of the anti-graft agency, Wang Qishan had stepped down from the Standing Committee. It adds to the speculation that he might become China’s Vice President or get any other influential role. After getting China’s top post, Xi has a crackdown on democracy and human rights.

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ALSO READ: Indian troops to master Mandarin to enhance security skills against Chinese troops</s>China’s ruling Communist Party has proposed to remove a constitutional clause that limits the service of presidents to two consecutive terms, official news agency Xinhua reported on Sunday.

The party’s Central Committee proposed to remove the expression that the president and vice president of the People’s Republic of China shall serve “no more than two consecutive terms” from the country’s Constitution.

Constitutional reform needs the Parliament’s approval. If it is accepted, the change would pave the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in office indefinitely. As the country’s Parliament is full of members who are loyal to the party, the proposal is not expected to be blocked, according to Reuters.

In October 2017, the Communist Party endorsed Xi for a second five-year term, which will end in 2022. China also broke its tradition by not naming a clear successor to Xi, which has only further strengthened the president’s grip on the country.

The Central Committee also proposed that “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” should be inserted into the Constitution, Xinhua reported. Xi’s guiding political ideology has already been written into the Communist Party of China’s constitution, making him the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.</s>In a move likely to pave the way for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to stay at the country’s helm beyond his second five-year term, the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee has proposed to remove term limits for the president and vice president.

In a short release, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said that the Central Committee had proposed to remove from the country’s constitution the expression that the president and vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms.”

It said the proposal was made public Sunday, a day ahead of a scheduled meeting of the Central Committee. It was unclear why the announcement was made ahead of that meeting.

Xi, 64, was approved to begin his second five-year term late last year and is slated to step down in 2022. But many analysts believe he wants to stay in office longer.

Xi, the general-secretary of the Central Committee, had stressed the important role of the constitution on Saturday.

“No organization or individual has the power to overstep the constitution or the law,” Xinhua, in a separate report, quoted Xi as saying during a Central Committee Politburo meeting Saturday.

At a Central Committee plenary session in January, party leaders decided on a plan to write Xi’s guiding principle into the constitution at the National People’s Congress scheduled for next month. Xi will also be formally elected to his second term at the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp parliament, which opens March 5.

The principle, entitled “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” was added to the Communist Party’s constitution last year.

The country’s constitution was first adopted in 1982 and has not been amended since 2004. Speculation that Xi might seek to stay in office past his mandate has hit a fever pitch since he unveiled a new leadership line-up in October that didn’t include a clear possible heir.

Xi, as the son of a famed Communist Party veteran, is known as a “princeling.” He rose through the ranks to the position of Shanghai’s party leader in 2007 before being promoted the same year to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee. A year later, in a sign that he would succeed then-leader Hu Jintao, he was tapped to be vice president.

Since his elevation to the presidency in 2012, Xi has overseen a wide-ranging crackdown on corruption that has helped him eliminate rivals and consolidate his grip on power.

As commander in chief of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Xi has also been at the helm of a military modernization campaign that poured cash into the country’s defense budgets while streamlining its forces.

He has also moved to shore up his legacy, last year taking on the mantle of “core” of the party leadership, elevating him above his predecessors to a position reminiscent of communist China’s founder, Mao Zedong.

But at least one analyst said the announcement revealed weakness in the Communist Party’s bid to maintain power.

“I interpret this piece of news as evidence that the CCP is weaker and more vulnerable than thought, not strong and stable,” Lyle Morris, a China expert and senior analyst at the Rand Corp., wrote on Twitter in reference to the party. “A party that allows a leader through cult and power of personality to re-write the rules of succession is not a political party confident in itself.”</s>China is close to eliminating presidential term limits, meaning current president Xi Jinping would be able to stay in power indefinitely. The proposed change to the country’s constitution, which was announced on Sunday by the Central Committee of China’s Communist Party, would appear to signal that President Xi not only wants to stay in power, but has, unlike his predecessors, accumulated enough power to be able to change the rules in order to keep it. “Papa Xi” as he is referred to in official songs, was already the most powerful leader of the country since Mao Zedong, and by consolidating his power, he has developed a reputation of a strongman in the mold of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Ending term limits would represent the biggest political change in the country in decades. Under current law, presidents are only allowed to serve two five-year terms, meaning the 64-year-old Xi would have to leave office at the end of his second term in 2023. The term limits were put in place in the 1990s to aid in smoother and more predictable transitions of power in the country.

The new draft amendments to China’s Constitution, which include abolishing the term limits as well adding Xi’s signature political treatise to the constitution’s preamble, were apparently approved by the Communist Party a month ago. They will not almost certainly be passed into law by the National People’s Congress in March, as China’s legislature always goes along with the proposals of party officials.</s>Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also the leader of China's Communist Party, has been president since 2013 and would step down in 2023 under the present constitution. If this proposal is considered and accepted, then the current leader of the country Xi Jinping will be able to remain in office not only for the next five years, but even longer.

In addition, according to reports, the Central Committee proposed including theoretical positions introduced by Xi Jinping on the new era of the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the country's constitution.

READ MORE: China Looks Forward With 'Xi Jinping Thought'

The proposed amendments to the constitution may be considered during the first session of the National People's Congress of the 13th convocation. According to the promulgated plans, it will open on March 5.

One of the most important items on the agenda will be the re-election of current President Xi Jinping to a second five-year term by lawmakers. On the proposal of the head of state, a candidature for the post of Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, which is likely to become Li Keqiang, should be approved for a similar period.

At the XIX Congress of the Communist Party of China in October 2017, the ideas of Xi Jinping were introduced into its charter.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposes that the country's constitution be amended to abolish term limits for the posts of President and Vice President. The move is seen as an attempt by current president Xi Jinping to solidify his power.