There Will Be Xi

China’s president may be in office for a long time. Is he on the right side of history?

- Brian Bremner & Peter Martin

China’s decision to repeal presidential term limits marks the moment when President Xi Jinping dropped any pretense of following the rules. The move, which may extend his tenure beyond 2023, shows just how deep the cult of Xi runs in Chinese politics. His political thought was enshrined into the Communist Party’s charter alongside his name last fall, giving Xi, 64, the same mythic status as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. His government regularly bends Chinese companies to its iron will. Just ask Wu Xiaohui, who faces prosecution for alleged fraud, and whose debt-burdened Anbang Insurance Group Co. was seized on Feb. 23 by the government as it cracks down on financial risk.

Yet China’s embrace of lifetime job security for its top leader is fraught with geopolitical implications. It cements Xi’s status as the world’s most powerful autocrat just as countries question the reliability of U.S. leadership and as Russia demonstrates its willingness to subvert democratic processes.

Xi’s China and President Vladimir Putin’s Russia are seeking “a world consistent with their authoritarian models,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in early January as he unveiled the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy. China has viewed its centralised system as necessary to govern 1.4 billion citizens and says it doesn’t seek hegemony. The report, in contrast, sees China as rapidly modernising its military, assertively staking its claim to disputed territory in the South China Sea, and using “predatory economics to coerce neighbouring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage.”