Another step closer to Mao

Xi’s rule echoing ex-leader’s stride

SHANGHAI: Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on China had already earned the leader comparisons to Mao Zedong, but they came into even sharper focus after the party paved the way for him to assume the presidency indefinitely.

State media said on Sunday that the ruling Communist Party had proposed abolishing rules limiting leaders to two five-year terms, a guideline imposed in Mao’s wake to avoid a repeat of the chaos triggered by his radical political campaigns.

The move could allow the 64-year-old Xi to remain in power for life, ruling as a virtual emperor, and is the latest feather in the cap of a Communist “princeling” who is re-making China in his own image.

Xi, who was given a second term as the party’s general secretary at the five-yearly party congress in October, has amassed seemingly unchecked power and a level of officially-stoked adula- tion unseen since Communist China’s founder Mao.

Even though his father Xi Zhongxun – a renowned revolutionary hero turned vice-premier – was purged by Mao, Xi has remained true to the party that rules with an iron fist and over which he reigns supreme.

Following Mao’s disastrous economic campaigns and the bloody 1966- 76 Cultural Revolution, the Communist leadership sought to prevent further chaos by tempering presidential power through a system in which major personnel and policy decisions were hashed out by the ruling Politburo Standing Committee.

The move helped prevent political power from becoming too concentrated in the hands of a single leader but was also blamed for policy indecision that led to growing ills such as worsening pollution, corruption and social unrest. — AFP