Xi joins Mao and Deng in party pantheon and could rule for life

Chinese leader Xi Jinping was elevated to the pantheon of the country’s greatest leaders.

Xi Jinping centre stage at the closing of the national party congress yesterday. Picture: AP

The 2270 delegates to China’s five-yearly communist party national congress yesterday unanimously elevated their general secretary, President Xi Jinping, to the same historic status as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

He thereby leapfrogged in authority predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, who sat ­either side of him at yesterday’s closing plenary session of the congress, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The delegates did this by agreeing to revise the party constitution to include in its guiding principles Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era alongside Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents and the Scientific Outlook on Development.

The latter two principles are ­associated with, respectively, Mr Jiang and Mr Hu — but they failed to accumulate sufficient power in the party to have their names ­attached to them.

With his name in the constitution, Mr Xi will have the last word on all political matters. He could stay on as the nation’s top leader even if he gives up the title of party general secretary when his second term ends in 2022.

Mr Xi also managed to get at least two of his cherished programs written into the constitution: an anti-corruption campaign that has brought down 1.5 million crooked officials since 2012 and the Belt and Road Initiative, the global trade infrastructure project intended to increase China’s influence abroad.

The reports presented in public at the closing ceremony — previous votes took place in private meetings — were all adopted without a vote against.

The congress also yesterday elected a new 204-member Central Committee, which included just 10 women.

Xi Jinping votes with Jiang Zemin yesterday. Picture: AP

It will elect the party’s new ruling council, the Politburo Standing Committee, today. The team of seven men — never in the party’s 96 years a woman — will become the most powerful in China for the next five years, although in today’s changed political climate decidedly subsidiary to Mr Xi himself.

Most observers will be watching to see whether the six other members include an obvious candidate or two with the experience and comparative youth to mark them out as successors to Mr Xi.

Mr Xi is set to secure a second five-year term as general secretary. The convention, developed since Mao died in 1976, is that leaders are granted no more than two terms. But a growing consensus of experts now believes it possible that Mr Xi, 64, could seek to stay on for a third term or for life.

Some of his goals, such as building a modern military by 2035, go beyond the end of his second term, a hint he foresees himself staying at the centre of China’s political life for years to come.

Mr Xi said in a brief speech — before the congress ended with the singing of the Internationale — that today the Chinese people “live in jubilation and dignity”, in a country that “radiates with enormous dynamism”, with a civilisation that “shines with lasting splendour and glamour”.

He spoke in clear, standard Mandarin — unlike Mao and Deng, whose accents were almost incomprehensible — but in a low-key, almost dismissive manner.