On March 11, China’s National People’s Congress made official what had been rumored for more than two weeks, voting to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency. Current president Xi Jinping is now able to serve in that post indefinitely. That decision is merely the latest in a series of ominous developments that have occurred since Xi took office in 2013.
Ending term limits significantly alters China’s political system. Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the country’s radical economic reforms beginning in the late 1970s, also implemented that crucial political reform. He and his followers did so to guard against a repeat of the horrid abuses committed during the long, tyrannical rule of Mao Zedong. And the restriction did achieve a limited success. China hardly became a democratic state, but within the context of a one-party system, Deng’s successors served more like chief executive officers, with other members of the party elite acting as a board of directors that could, and did, serve as a check on the president’s power. Removing the limit on presidential terms means that an incumbent now has abundant time to accumulate more and more personal power. The threat of strongman rule, with all its potential abuses, has returned.
As I point out in a recent article in Aspenia Online, Xi was exhibiting troubling behavior even before pushing through the legislation ending term limits. Under the guise of combatting corruption (admittedly a very real problem in China), he systematically purged officials who showed signs of independent views. There has been a troubling hardline ideological aspect to his rule as well. Xi initiated a campaign to revitalize the Party, aiming at achieving a renewed commitment to Maoist principles. Even pro-market academics felt the chill of the new political environment, with crackdowns directed against several prominent reformers, including economist Mao Yushi, the 2012 recipient of the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/ominous-trends-china
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