China will consider changing the constitution to allow Xi Jinping to rule beyond 2023

THE Chinese Communist Party has proposed removing the limit of two terms for the country’s president, which could make Xi Jinping the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

CHINA’S ruling Communist Party has proposed scrapping term limits for the country’s president, the official news agency says, appearing to lay the groundwork for party leader Xi Jinping to rule as president beyond 2023.

The party’s Central Committee proposed to remove from the constitution the expression that China’s president and vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms”, the Xinhua News Agency said on Sunday.

China’s Communist Party added President Xi Jinping to its constitution on October 24, 2017, confirming him as the nation's most powerful leader since Mao. Picture: AFP

“Xi Jinping has finally achieved his ultimate goal when he first embarked on Chinese politics — that is to be the Mao Zedong of the 21st century,” said Willy Lam, a political analyst at the Chinese University in Hong Kong.

Xi, 64, cemented his status as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao in the 1970s at last year’s twice-a-decade Communist Party congress, where his name and a political theory attributed to him were added to the party constitution as he was given a second five-year term as general secretary.

President Xi Jinping has centralised power, including military power. Picture: AFP

It was the latest move by the party signalling Xi’s willingness to break with tradition and centralise power under him. Xi has taken control of an unusually wide range of political, economic and other functions, a break with the past two decades of collective leadership.

“What is happening is potentially very dangerous because the reason why Mao Zedong made one mistake after another was because China at the time was a one-man show,” Lam said. “For Xi Jinping, whatever he says is the law. There are no longer any checks and balances.” Xi is coming to the end of his first five-year term as president and is set to be appointed to his second term at an annual meeting of the rubberstamp parliament that starts March 5.

The proposal to end term limits will likely be approved at that meeting.

Political analysts said the party would likely seek to justify the proposed removal of the presidential term limit by citing Xi’s vision of establishing a prosperous, modern society by 2050.

US President Donald Trump shakes hands with China's President Xi Jinping, who has a vision for China as a prosperous nation. Picture: AFP

Sunday’s announcement on term limits came before the Central Committee was to begin a three-day meeting in Beijing on Monday to discuss major personnel appointments and other issues.

The son of a famed communist elder, Xi rose through the ranks to the position of Shanghai’s party leader before being promoted to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee in 2007.

When Xi did assume the top spot in 2012, it was as head of a reduced seven-member committee on which he had only one reliable ally, veteran Wang Qishan. He put Wang in charge of a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown that helped Xi eliminate challengers, both serving and retired, and cow potential opponents.