By Steven Chen
In China, the National People’s Congress has approved the abolition of term limits which would have restricted the president and vice president’s regime from exceeding two terms(ten years in total). The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of this change: only two delegates voted against the change and three abstained, out of 2,964 votes. This year, President Xi reached the end of his first term, and according to the former constitution, he was supposed to finish his term in 2023. However, the removal of the term limits would allow Xi to rule for the rest of his life if he chose to.
The amendment process was set in motion on September 29th, 2017, in the Communist Party’s Politburo, the policy-making committee of the communist party. In the meeting, the party broke the tradition of designating a successor by the end of the current president’s first term. This time, they did not anoint the next president after Xi. Furthermore in the meeting, the party decided to expel Sun Zhengcai, a secretary of a district of China. He was seen as a possible successor to president Xi. Sun had been under investigation in the name of corruption since July and finally removed in the meeting in September.
The term limit was introduced to China’s constitution in 1982 in fears of dictators after the Cultural Revolution which was launched by Mao Zedong. However, the end of term limits did not usually suggest the end of power. Deng Xiaoping was a revolutionary who led China into the global market and foreign investments since 1980. He still participated in making Chinese economic decisions after his resignation from office.
This year, alongside the change of term limits, it was also proposed to insert “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” into the preamble of the constitution in the package of amendments. This enshrines it alongside Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought which are key political communist philosophies that allege an emphasis on the popular mass, the proletariat, and an attempt to build “New China” by the Communist Party of China.
Amendments were also proposed to form a separate anti-corruption body functioning independently of state or judiciary agencies. Since 2013, President Xi has launched the ongoing anti-corruption campaign. The campaign focused only on party members and punished them for lavish banquets, travel, or constructions of government buildings. Since then, over 1.5 million officials have been disciplined. According to a report from Xinhua agency, the official press of China, the new proposed anti-corruption agency press was expected to be “a political organ, rather than an administrative or judicial organ. When carrying out its duties of supervision, investigation, and disposition, it should always give top priority to politics.”
In response to the amendments, some critics compared the political decision to 1984 and Animal Farm. In contrast, supports viewed it as a necessity to continue Xi’s strong leadership.
Sources:
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-03-06/china-cites-support-for-ending-presidential-term-limits
https://qz.com/1222228/chinas-communist-party-says-its-ending-presidential-term-limits-by-popular-demand/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/world/asia/china-xi-jinping.html
https://www.npr.org/2018/02/28/589415488/china-plans-to-abolish-term-limits-for-president-xi-jinping
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/25/asia/china-communist-party-xi-jinping-intl/index.html
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/03/06/new-chinese-agency-could-undercut-other-anti-corruption-efforts/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-sets-growth-target-set-to-end-president-term-limit/2018/03/04/cdf693fa-201b-11e8-946c-9420060cb7bd_story.html?utm_term=.f8c0815e9018
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43361276
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/world/asia/china-sun-zhengcai-disgraced.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maoism#New_Democracy