Xi Jinping, President for Life

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The Wall Street Journal

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Feb. 25, 2018 5:39 p.m. ET

China will amend its constitution to allow Presidents to serve more than two terms, the state-run news agency Xinhua announced Sunday. The change is momentous because it confirms Xi Jinping has become the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. He is abolishing term-limit rules and other norms that Deng Xiaoping created in the 1980s to prevent a repeat of Mao’s disastrous rule.

After taking power in 2012, Mr. Xi used an anticorruption campaign to purge rivals and concentrate power in his hands, breaking the post-Mao convention that power should be shared among a group of leaders loyal to different factions. China’s elite politics has since reverted to a winner-takes-all contest, as Deng feared. Mr. Xi has created a Mao-style cult of personality, most recently granting himself the title of lingxiu, a term for a supreme leader not used in four decades.

According to Xinhua, the decision to allow Mr. Xi to stay on after 2023 was made at a Communist Party meeting last month. The fact that it was not announced in the official report at the end of the meeting suggests the move is controversial and there is still resistance to Mr. Xi’s power grab. This week the Party’s Central Committee will meet again to pick which officials will serve in important posts weeks before the country’s rubber-stamp legislature is due to meet and appoint them, again a sign of infighting.

It’s still not clear what effect Mr. Xi’s increasing power will have on economic policy. Reformist adviser Liu He was promoted to the Politburo last October and is now tipped to become a vice premier as well as governor of China’s central bank. Mr. Liu is also due to visit Washington this week to discuss tensions over the lack of reciprocity in economic relations.

But it’s worth remembering that Mr. Xi broke his previous promises to restart economic reforms over the last five years. His political drive to increase control over all aspects of society overrode Mr. Liu’s worthy agenda of giving greater scope to market forces. As the state takeover of Anbang Insurance last Friday shows, dangerous imbalances have built up in the financial system due to stimulus policies that require excessive debt, endangering China’s economic development.

Xinhua claims that Mr. Xi is leading China into a new era of prosperity and strength. But behind the facade of unity, political struggles continue. By making himself essentially President for Life, Mr. Xi has made Chinese politics more volatile and unpredictable.

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