China faces rule by Xi for decades with repeal of term limits

Bloomberg

China’s Communist Party is set to repeal presidential term limits in a move that would allow Xi Jinping to rule beyond 2023, completing the country’s departure from a political system based on collective leadership.
The party’s Central Committee announced it was seeking to end a constitutional provision that bars the head of state from serving more than two consecutive terms. That would remove the only formal barrier to Xi, who is also party leader and commander-in-chief of the military, staying in power indefinitely.
The move was first flagged at a party meeting last October, although the formal announcement shows the extent of Xi’s grip on power heading into the start of his second term. It dispenses with the orderly succession system China adopted in the aftermath of Mao Zedong’s chaotic rule as it sought legitimacy from the West, and draws comparisons with Vlad-imir Putin’s successful effort to consolidate control over Russia’s post-Soviet democracy.
“China has traditionally had some degree of healthy debate within the leadership about the direction China should go,” said David Cohen, a Beijing-based managing editor at consulting firm China Policy. “This move signals that those whose opinion Xi has to care about are either happy about the direction Xi is taking things, or have been effectively sidelined.”
The announcement drew parallels to Putin, 65, who has served in either of Moscow’s top two posts since 1999 and is expected to easily win reelection next month. Russia’s term limits would require him to relinquish control in 2024.
Xi has visited Moscow more than other capital city since he came to power in 2012. Putin told China’s state broadcaster they celebrated his birthday in 2013.”
“I think Xi compares himself to, and is modeling himself on, Putin, and just look to see how Russia is developing,” said Fraser Howie, co-author of “Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundations of China’s Extraordinary Rise.” “For the moment, nothing changes, of course,” Howie said. “Xi is only going into his second term and a lot could still happen.”
Speculation that Xi, 64, might seek to stay on intensified after he declined to set out a clear successor at the party’s twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle in October. But the constitutional amendment represents a formal break from the succession practices China set up to establish stability and facilitate its economic revival after the tumult of the Mao era.
Mao used his cult of personality to enact industrial policies blamed for tens of millions of starvation deaths and subjected the party’s elite to bloody purges.
The announcement comes a week before China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, meets with an agenda that includes confirming Xi’s second term and approving a series of constitutional changes recommended by the Central Committee. The term-limit repeal was not among the amendments announced after the committee last met in January.
The change underscores the extent of Xi’s power after October congress elevated him to a status alongside the nation’s most vaunted political figures. Party charter changes put Xi on par with Mao and Deng Xiaoping, and also declared him the party’s “core” leader indefinitely. The seven-member Politburo Standing Committee — the country’s supreme political body — elected after the event included no members young enough to take power after Xi’s second term. That was a departure from established norms that saw Xi’s own appointment to the body in 2007.