China’s parliament has overwhelmingly endorsed a constitutional change scrapping presidential term limits, paving the way for President\u00a0Xi Jinping\u00a0to rule without any time limit.<\/p>\n
According to agency reports, out of 2,963 delegates at the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), 2,958 voted “yes” to changing the Constitution on Sunday.\u00a0Three abstained and two voted against, the parliament announced.<\/p>\n
Moreover, Xinhua reports that China\u2019s National People\u2019s Congress (NPC) has enshrined Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characeristics for a New Era in the country\u2019s constitution on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It said, \u201cThe amendment, adopted at the first session of the 13th NPC with an overwhelming majority, wrote Xi’s thought into the Constitution’s preamble, along with other guiding theories including Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, and the Theory of Three Represents\u201d.<\/p>\n
On February 25, the ruling party announced the proposal amidst backlash in some quarters. However, it has justified the change as a necessity to align the presidency with Xi\u2019s two other more powerful posts: heads of the party and the military having no term limits.<\/p>\n
The Chinese parliament move reverses the era of “collective” leadership and orderly succession to ensure stability following the turbulent one-man rule of Communist China’s founder\u00a0Mao Zedong.<\/p>\n
President Xi Jinping has\u00a0consolidated power\u00a0since taking office as general secretary of the Communist Party in 2012, which has no term limits. His two predecessors gave up after two terms.<\/p>\n
Xi was to leave presidency after the end of his second term in 2023. But after the change in constitution he can now have a lifetime to push his vision of a rejuvenated\u00a0China.<\/p>\n
His rise has been accompanied by tighter restrictions on civil society. However, he gained popularity among Chinese people due to a relentless crackdown on\u00a0corruption\u00a0that has punished more than a million party officials.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Communist Party, which says the move merely, aligns the presidency with the limit-free titles of party and military chief, claims “the masses” unanimously called for the removal of term limits.<\/p>\n
The proposal of constitutional amendment removing the term limit was cleared in a party meeting chaired by Xi in September last year. It was revealed in a state media report on February 25, a week before the legislature’s opening session.<\/p>\n
However, the surprise move triggered criticism online, prompting state censors to block phrases and words such as “I disagree” and “emperor” and the image of Winnie the Pooh, the cartoon bear to which Xi has been compared.<\/p>\n
Xinhua state news agency reports that the revised and final version of the legislation was sent to members of the parliament on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China’s parliament has overwhelmingly endorsed a constitutional change scrapping presidential term limits, paving the way for President\u00a0Xi Jinping\u00a0to rule without any time limit. According to agency reports, out of 2,963 delegates at the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), 2,958 voted “yes” to changing the Constitution on Sunday.\u00a0Three abstained and two voted against, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":39542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1511],"tags":[1303,44303,3590],"yst_prominent_words":[44301,6025,44298,44296,44297,44302,26978,44300,44294,44292,7709,4023,44299,44293,7430,7424,27803,44295,25984,7431],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Untitled-new3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39538"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39538"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=39538"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=39538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}