Communist Party lifts Xi to Mao ‘of the 21st century’
Writings enshrined in constitution, boosting power
BEIJING — China’s Communist Party formally elevated President Xi Jinping to the same status as party legends Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping on Tuesday, writing his name into its constitution and setting up the nation’s leader for an extended stay in power.
The move will make Xi the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, with ambitions to tighten party control over society and make his country a superpower on the world stage, with a political philosophy directly opposed to that of the West.
The unanimous vote to enshrine “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era” in the constitution came on the final day of the week-long 19th party congress, a gathering of the party elite held every five years in the cavernous Great Hall of the People on the western side of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
There is no “Little Red Book” of pithy quotations as there was under Mao, but instead a mightier, drier tome of his speeches on “The Governance of China.” Nevertheless, Xi’s ideas will now become compulsory learning for Chinese students.
His is an explicit rejection of Western ideas about democracy and free speech in favor of Communist Party leadership in every aspect of life, and a desire to challenge the United States’ pre-eminent role in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
On Wednesday, more evidence of Xi’s power will emerge when he introduces to the media the other members of the Communist Party’s top leadership, the Politburo Standing Committee. Experts say it is unlikely that a clear successor will emerge or be anointed, leaving Xi’s position free of an obvious challenge.
The party congress effectively marks the start of Xi’s second five-year-term as party general secretary. But the chances are now higher that this will not be his last — or at least that he will remain the most powerful person in China beyond 2022.
“The amendment of the party constitution effectively confirms Xi Jinping’s aspiration to be the Mao Zedong of the 21st century — that means a top leader with no constraints on tenure or retirement age,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The inclusion of Xi’s name in the party’s document makes him only the third Chinese leader to be so honored, with his ideology joining Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory as a “guide to action.”
Xi Jinping Thought embodies several important principles, experts said: primarily that the party is in control of every aspect of life in China, from the economy to the Internet, from politics to culture and religion.
Xi highlighted what he called the “principal contradiction” in modern China, between unbalanced and unequal development and “people’s needs for a better life.”