YouTube/CCTV English
China’s ruling Communist Party proposed this week to eliminate presidential term limits, making it possible for current president Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely.
Without a set limit, Xi will be following in the footsteps of communist China’s founder Mao Zedong, who ruled from 1949-1976, but also oversaw the deaths of tens of millions.
The most impressive aspect of Xi’s leadership — and potentially the most threatening — is his calculated consolidation of power.
As president for the last five years, Xi initiated a corruption crackdown, which jailed some of China’s highest-ranking leaders, and created central leading groups that allow him to bypass regular checks and balances. Xi has effectively gained oversight on almost all aspects of Chinese policy, from military reform to cybersecurity.
He has also increased internet censorship, which is aimed at curbing popular dissent, and implemented the ambitious Belt and Road initiative, China’s global trade and infrastructure plan to link 70 countries.
Xi is coming to the end of his first five-year term and is set to be appointed to a second, and no longer final, term starting March 5.
Here is a look at some key moments that marked Xi’s rise to absolute power.
October 2007: After spending 25 years in various government posts across China, Xi is named to the country’s highest decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee.
Guang Niu/Getty Images
The Politburo Standing Committee consists of China’s top leaders. While it has collective decision making power on national policy, its decision making process and the issues it debates remain unclear.
Xi joined the committee alongside new members Li Keqiang, the current Premier, He Guoqiang, who quietly retired as Xi was elected, and Zhou Yongkang, who was later jailed under Xi’s corruption sweep.
Source: NPR
March 2008: Xi moves up in ranks to become vice president to Hu Jintao.
Feng Li/Getty Images
The new title, and an unofficial rule that would see most of the Standing Committee soon retire, meant Xi was now expected to succeed then-president Hu.
According to a government profile on Xi following his appointment, the leader had “affections for the common folk” and was well-known for “amicability.”
Retired senior officials in Zhejiang, where Xi lived from 2002 to 2007, said he is a “man of action without making shows, an open-minded man with a down-to-earth style of work.”
Source: Government of the People’s Republic of China
March 2013: Xi becomes president.
Feng Li/Getty Images
Xi’s accession to president was essentially unchallenged.
Nearly 3,000 carefully vetted communist party members met for the National People’s Congress, and voted for Xi in a rubber stamp ceremony. There was just one “no” vote and three abstentions.
Experts speculate that members of Standing Committee bargain in secret to delegate a president several months before the congress “vote.”
That same year Xi introduced his major global infrastructure initiative, Belt and Road, and created the National Security Commission, which he also chairs.
