At the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China this month, Xi Jinping will almost certainly be confirmed for a third term as the party’s general secretary and China’s president. With that, he will become China’s longest-serving paramount leader since Mao Zedong, and the rules and norms that are supposed to govern the CPC regime will be shattered.

Those rules and norms were put in place largely by Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, who took power in 1978. Deng knew firsthand the damage the party’s ideological fanaticism could do. During the Cultural Revolution, one of his sons was paralysed by rampaging Red Guards.