[The announcement also confirmed that Mr. Xi has amassed enough power to rewrite the rules that had constrained his predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, both of whom stepped down after two terms. Those rules were aimed at preventing the reappearance of the cult of personality that had surrounded the People’s Republic’s founding father, Mao Zedong.]
By
Chris Buckley and Keith Bradsher
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President Xi Jinping of
China at the Communist Party congress
in Beijing last October.
Current law restricts the president to
two terms. Credit How
Hwee Young/
European Pressphoto
Agency
|
BEIJING
— China’s Communist Party
has cleared the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power, perhaps
indefinitely, by announcing on Sunday that it wants to abolish the two-term
limit on the presidency — a dramatic move that would mark the country’s biggest
political change in decades.
The party leadership “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,” Xinhua, the official news agency, reported.
With each term set at five years, the
Constitution currently limits Mr. Xi, who became president in 2013, to 10 years
in office. But the announcement appears to be the strongest signal yet that Mr.
Xi, 64, intends to hold onto power longer than any Chinese leader in at least a
generation.
“I think this is without a doubt the clearest
confirmation we’ve had yet that Xi Jinping plans to stay in power much longer
than we thought,” said Jude Blanchette, an expert on Chinese politics in
Beijing who works for the Conference Board, which provides research for
companies. “We should expect Xi Jinping to be the dominant political force in
China for the next decade.”
The announcement also confirmed that Mr. Xi
has amassed enough power to rewrite the rules that had constrained his
predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, both of whom stepped down after two
terms. Those rules were aimed at preventing the reappearance of the cult of
personality that had surrounded the People’s Republic’s founding father, Mao
Zedong.
“I don’t see any reasonable challenges for
him,” Wu Qiang, a political analyst in Beijing who formerly taught at Tsinghua
University, said of Mr. Xi. “He has removed any potential political
competitors.”
The proposed constitutional changes were
released in the name of the Central Committee, a council of hundreds of senior
party officials, who will meet from Monday for three days.
According to state media reports on Sunday,
the Central Committee approved the amendments to the Constitution at a meeting
last month. But the vague official announcement released at that time did not
hint at the momentous expansion of Mr. Xi’s presidential power, which was kept
secret until Sunday.
In another victory for Mr. Xi, the draft
amendments to the Constitution would also add his trademark expression for his
main ideas — “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for
a New Era” — into the preamble of the Constitution, as well as adding a nod to
the ideological contributions of his predecessor, Mr. Hu.
The amendments are almost certain to be
passed into law by the party-controlled legislature, the National People’s
Congress, which holds its annual full session from March 5. The congress has
never voted down a proposal from party leaders.
Sunday’s move will make Mr. Xi much more
powerful than he already was, and will dampen any remnants of resistance to his
rule, said Zhang Baohui, professor of international affairs at Lingnan
University in Hong Kong.
“Once people know he will serve for who knows
how long, it will strengthen his power and motivate everybody to bandwagon with
him,” said Mr. Zhang. “Any rival will think he will be almighty.”
If Mr. Xi had retained the two-term limit,
his power would have begun to wane in a year or two as he effectively became a
lame duck, analysts said. Traditionally, Chinese leaders’ powers weaken once
they approach the second half of their second term, they said.
In what would be another break with
tradition, Wang Qishan, a close ally of Mr. Xi who enforced his harsh campaign
against corruption and disloyalty in the party, appears set to return to power
as vice president. Mr. Wang, 69, stepped down from a party position last year
because of his age.
Mr. Xi is overturning a two-term limit on
national leaders that evolved from the 1990s, when the country sought a more
predictable system for handing power to new generations. Greater stability was
sought after the upheavals of Mao’s era and then Deng Xiaoping’s failed efforts
to engineer a smooth succession.
Mr. Jiang, the party leader installed during
the Tiananmen protests of 1989, served two terms as president from 1993 to
2003, but he lingered in power until 2004 by retaining control of the committee
that runs China’s military. Mr. Jiang’s successor, Mr. Hu, stepped down from
all his positions, however, and did not try to hang onto power — an example
that some experts at first expected Mr. Xi to follow.
The abolition of the term limit may also
explain another recent move by Mr. Xi to send one of his closest advisers, Liu
He, to Washington on Tuesday. While that trip had initially looked like an
attempt to discuss the Trump administration’s tougher rhetoric on trade, it now
seems likely to also be a mission to explain Mr. Xi’s plans to American
leaders.
Mr. Liu is a longtime economist and associate
of Mr. Xi who jumped several rungs in the Communist Party hierarchy when Mr. Xi
promoted him into the Politburo during a Communist Party national congress in
October.
At the same party congress, Mr. Xi
conspicuously broke with precedent by choosing not to name a pair of much
younger officials to the Politburo’s ruling inner circle, the seven-member
standing committee, to serve as his heirs-in-waiting. Instead, Mr. Xi chose men
— no women — who were closer to his own age or older.
Mr. Xi’s strongman style has been compared to
that of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. But even Mr. Putin, who has
amassed considerable personal power, did not try to erase his country’s
constitutional limit on serving more than two consecutive terms as president as
he approached that limit in 2008.
Instead, he arranged for a close adviser with
limited personal influence, Dmitri A. Medvedev, to serve as president for a
single term while Mr. Putin held the post of prime minister. Mr. Putin then
returned to the presidency in 2012, and is running this year for re-election to
another term.
Mr. Xi may now have even greater power, and
the question will be how he chooses to use it.
“Xi Jinping is susceptible to making big
mistakes because there are now almost no checks or balances,” said Willy Lam,
an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who is the author
of a biography of Mr. Xi in 2015. “Essentially, he has become emperor for
life.”
Javier C. Hernández contributed reporting
from Beijing and Jane Perlez from Hong Kong.