China’s Communist Party has proposed repealing presidential term limits, which could potentially allow Chinese President Xi Jinping to stay in power beyond the end of his second term in 2023, according to a report.
The party’s Central Committee put forward plans to remove language in China’s constitution that stipulates the president and vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms,” per the official Xinhua News Agency on Sunday.
The announcement comes a week before China’s Community Party-controlled National People’s Congress meets to confirm Xi’s second five-year term and to consider a raft of other constitutional amendments suggested by the party, Bloomberg reported.
In addition to serving as head of state, Xi is also the Communist Party’s leader and commands the country’s military.
Xi first moved to consolidate his stranglehold on power in October when the party’s top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, permitted him to continue in a leadership position after 2022 despite retirement protocols established following Mao Zedong’s death.
That same month the party’s broader Central Committee incorporated Xi’s political philosophies into the party’s constitution, elevating him to the same status of Mao and Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping.
China’s term limit clause was inserted into its constitution in 1982 under Deng in an attempt to avoid the cult-like leadership demonstrated by Mao, who was the Communist Party’s chairman from before it swept into power in 1949 after the Chinese Civil War until his death in 1976.
