Xi Jinping starts third term as China’s president
2 min read . Updated: 10 Mar 2023, 06:55 AM IST
Premium- Xi Jinping's reelection is the culmination of a remarkable rise in which he has gone from a relatively little-known party apparatchik to the leader of a global superpower
China's Xi Jinping is set to secure a third term as his country's head of state on Friday. Xi, who leads the ruling Communist Party, will become China’s longest-serving head of state since the Communist victory in 1949 after the country’s 3,000 members of rubber-stamp legislature formally vests him with another five years as president on Friday.
The annual legislative gathering is expected to also reappoint Xi as chairman of the Central Military Commission, a post that makes him chief of the world’s biggest armed forces in terms of active personnel. He was already the head of an identical party body overseeing the People’s Liberation Army.
A vice president will be voted into office, too, filling the role previously occupied by Wang Qishan.
69-year-old Xi Jinping is likely to easily win National People’s Congress backing to serve five more years. He took all 2,970 ballots cast in 2018, the same year China abolished constitutional provisions that would’ve prevented him from getting a third term.
His reelection is the culmination of a remarkable rise in which he has gone from a relatively little-known party apparatchik to the leader of a global superpower.
Xi Jinping's rise:
For decades China eschewed one-man rule in favour of a more consensus-based, but still autocratic, leadership.
That model imposed term limits on the ceremonial role of the presidency with Xi's predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao relinquishing power after 10 years in office.
Xi has torn up that rulebook, abolishing term limits in 2018 and allowing a cult of personality to foster his all-powerful leadership.
His coronation this week sets him up to become modern China's longest-serving head of state and will mean Xi will rule well into his seventies and -- if no challenger emerges -- even longer.
Jinping's challenges
According to the South China Morning Post, it will be a critical period for both Xi and China as he needs to put the country back on an economic growth path to convince the world that China’s unique governance and development model works and that his ambitious political legacy is within reach amid intensified rivalry with the US.
Xi has also faced some challenges, with mass protests over his zero-Covid policy and its subsequent abandonment that saw countless people die. Those issues have been avoided at this week's National People's Congress (NPC). The lawmakers have focused instead on a sweeping revamp of Beijing's science ministry and tech capabilities.