Beijing: China's ruling Communist Party today proposed to remove presidential
term limits from the Constitution, potentially allowing President Xi
Jinping to continue in power after his second term, which ends in 2023.
The
CPC Central Committee proposed removing the clause that the President
and Vice-President "shall serve no more than two consecutive terms" from
the country's Constitution, state-run Xinhua news agency reported
today.
The removal of the term limit, which was expected to be
endorsed by the Plenum of the party to be held tomorrow was expected to
give 64-year-old Xi, regarded as the most powerful leader in modern
China, a limitless tenure.
President Xi, who is also
head of the CPC and military, began his second five-year tenure last
year, following a national Congress of the CPC.
A seven-man
leadership committee unveiled last year included no potential successor,
raising the prospect that Xi intends to govern beyond his second term.
Since
then, all organs of the party have declared him as the topmost leader
of the party setting aside the principle of collective party leadership
that was followed in the last three decades.
Xi was elected as the head of the Party and President in 2013 and later took over as head of the military.
In 2016, the CPC officially gave him the title of "core" leader.
The
once-in-five-years Congress of the CPC last year approved Xi's ideology
to be written into its Constitution - an honour that had been reserved
only to modern China's founder Chairman Mao Zedong and his successor
Deng Xiaoping.
The thoughts of two of Xi's predecessors, Jiang Zemin and
Hu Jintao, were mentioned in the Constitution but not their
names.
Any attempt to challenge Xi or his thinking would be seen as defiance against the party.
Minutes
after the announcement today, Xinhua reported that the party proposed
to write Xi s political theory Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with
Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into the constitution.
It also planned to list the new super anti-graft body, the
National Supervisory Commission, as a new state agency in the
constitution.
The Central Committee also proposed to add core socialist values into China's Constitution.
PTI
