Xi Jinping may well plan to step aside as president in 2023, but he will maintain power behind the scenes anyway.
Photo credit: Reuters／達志影像
The News Lens
Date: 2018/03/28
By: By Mark Wenyi Lai, Taiwan Insight
While Premier William Lai (賴清德) and his cabinet ministers have been bogged down here in Taiwan by the toilet paper price hike “crisis” and resulting panic buying, their cross-Strait counterparts have been executing a grand political succession – or, more accurately, continuation. And the structural change to Beijing leadership that this involves may mean something quite different for Taiwan than most reports are suggesting.
It started on Feb. 25, when China’s state-run Xinhua news agency announced that the government was planning a constitutional amendment to abolish the presidential two-term limit. The reaction was predictably swift. Inside China, most news outlets toed the party line, with hurrahs for the extension of Xi’s “strong,” “stable,” and “superb” leadership beyond 2023. This support was echoed in the display of Xi’s slogans and portraits in the public sphere, stirring a sense of déjà vu of the Mao Zedong years. Outside China, a near-unanimous voice of criticism spoke out across newspapers globally, decrying what they described as the failure of the Chinese political system, the danger of a new Chinese emperor, and the frustration of Western leaders with an overconfident Xi.
“The purpose of the proposed constitutional amendment is to send a signal that he intends to maintain stability. Xi will surely remain in power after 2023, just not as president.”
Having researched and taught Chinese politics, particularly its succession mechanism, for more than a decade, I can’t help but wonder about some of the intriguing questions arising from this development. [FULL STORY]
