Why ending term limits for China’s Xi is a big deal
The roughly 3,000 delegates of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, voted almost unanimously to end a two-term limit on the presidency, one of the main leadership posts held by Xi Jinping. While the overwhelming approval by the party-controlled congress was not a surprise, the repercussions go beyond just allowing Xi to stay on longer.
Here’s what is at stake, and why ending the term limit matters.
Why is the limit in place now?
One lesson that China drew from the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution was the danger of concentrating power in one supreme, unassailable leader who ruled for life.
In 1982, when China was recovering from that chaotic era, lawmakers approved a new Constitution that said the president and vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms.”
It is sometimes said that Deng Xiaoping, who led China after Mao, introduced the term limit to prevent the top leader from again becoming too powerful. But that’s not entirely true. Back then the Chinese presidency was not such a powerful post. Deng wielded much of his power informally, without titles or term limits, and through his control of the military.
Even so, the politicians and legal experts who drafted China’s 1982 Constitution saw lifelong tenure as a recipe for tyranny, especially in a one-party state.
“If someone stays in office for 15 years, the people won’t dare express their opinions to him,” said Fang Yi, one of the framers of the Constitution. “The French president begins with one term of seven years, with an option for a second term. But that’s different. They have opposition parties who pick their faults every day.”
How did it become important?
The presidential term limit became more important in the 1990s, when Deng prepared to pass power to his successor, Jiang Zemin.
Under Deng in the 1980s, there was turmoil in succession,