Critics silenced as China acts to end Xi’s term limits
Posts wiped, key phrases blocked, opponents sent for ‘holidays’
BEIJING – The day China’s ruling Communist Party unveiled a proposal to allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely as Mao Zedong once did, Ma Bo was so shaken he couldn’t sleep.
So Ma, a renowned writer, wrote a social media post urging the party to remember the history of unchecked oneman rule that ended in catastrophe.
“History is regressing badly,” Ma thundered in his post. “As a Chinese of conscience, I cannot stay silent!”
Censors silenced him anyway, swiftly wiping his post from the internet.
As China’s rubber-stamp legislature prepares to approve constitutional changes abolishing term limits for the president on Sunday, signs of dissent and biting satire have been all but snuffed out.
The stifling censorship leaves intellectuals, young white-collar workers and retired veterans of past political campaigns using roundabout ways to voice their concerns. For many, it’s a foreshadowing of greater political repression ahead.
Once passed, the constitutional amendment would upend a system enacted by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1982 to prevent a return to the bloody excesses of a lifelong dictatorship typified by Mao Zedong’s chaotic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.
Party media say the proposed amendment is only aimed at bringing the office of the president in line with Xi’s other positions atop the party and the Central Military Commission, which do not impose term limits.
Its passage by the National People’s Congress’ nearly 3,000 hand-picked delegates is all but certain. But observers will be looking to see how many delegates abstain from voting as an indication of the reservations the move has encountered even within the political establishment.
The government’s censorship apparatus had to spring into action after the term limit proposal was unveiled, suppressing keywords on social media ranging from “I disagree” to “shameless” to “Xi Zedong.” Even the letter “N” was blocked after it was used as part of an equation for the number of terms Xi might serve.
Yet, occasionally, dissent has surfaced through the cracks.
On Wednesday, International Women’s Day, law students at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing – Xi’s alma mater – hung red banners that ostensibly celebrated the school’s female classmates but also satirized national politics.
“I love you without any term limits, but if there are, we can just remove them,” read one, while another banner declared that “A country can’t survive without a constitution, we can’t go on without you.”
University administrators weren’t amused. A student witness said the banners were quickly removed and notices posted requiring campus shops to register students who use printers to make large banners.
Chinese studying overseas have been more blunt. Posts in recent days popped up at the University of California, San Diego, with Xi’s picture and the text “Never My President” and spread to more than eight overseas universities, said Lebao Wu, a student at Australian National University in Canberra.
To be sure, Xi’s confident, populist leadership style and tough attitude toward official corruption have won him a significant degree of popular support.