China's unconventional ruler, Xi Jinping, has confirmed what everyone increasingly expected, or feared: that he intends to stay on for an indefinite time beyond the end of his current five-year term.

Sunday's extraordinary 3rd Party Plenum changed the Chinese Communist Party's constitution that required the party's General Secretary, and hence the country's President, to step down after two five-year terms. Xi is now free to stay in office after the current lustrum.