Xi Jinping to be anointed as China's most powerful leader since Mao | 10 facts | World News

The Chinese Communist Party will convene its 20th Congress on October 16 in Beijing during which Xi Jinping is likely to secure a third term in office as president, while a new top leadership line-up will also be unveiled.

Xi, 69, is expected to become China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

The congress, which takes place every five years, comes as Xi faces significant political headwinds, including an ailing economy, deteriorating relations with the United States and a strict zero-Covid policy that has accelerated China’s inward turn from the world.

What to look for from China’s 20th Communist Party congress:

1. It is widely expected to see Xi reinstated as president for a third term – unprecedented in the contemporary era. Xi joined the pantheon of Chinese leadership in 2012, two decades after bursting onto the scene as a graft-fighting governor.

2. China’s rubber-stamp parliament boosted Xi’s considerable power in 2018 when it approved a constitutional amendment abolishing presidential term limits. The move allowed Xi to remain in power for as long as he wishes, and is the latest feather in the cap of a Communist “princeling” who is remaking China in his own image.

3. Xi holds three key titles – general secretary of the Communist Party, chairman of the central military commission, and President. He is expected to retain the first two titles at the Party Congress, and the presidency during the annual National People’s Congress in March 2023.

Also Read: Hutong Cat | Stocktaking at the Communist party’s secretive beach retreat

5. A third term as party general secretary would break the norm adhered to by his two predecessors to step down after 10 years, or two full terms.

6. While Xi has consolidated power without precedent since Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic in 1949, there has been no sign he will adopt the title of party chairman. The first two Chinese leaders to succeed Mao, Hua Guofeng and Hu Yaobang, had the chairman title. It has not been used since 1982.

7. Xi is the first Chinese leader to have been born after 1949, when Mao’s Communist forces took over following a protracted civil war. The purging of his father led to years of difficulties for the family, but he nevertheless rose through the party’s ranks.

8. Beginning as a county-level party secretary in 1969, Xi climbed to the governorship of coastal Fujian province in 1999, then party chief of Zhejiang province in 2002 and eventually Shanghai in 2007.

9. Xi’s face graces the front page of newspapers in the country, while his exploits and directives regularly headline the evening news. The Communist Party Congress in 2017 confirmed Xi’s induction into the leadership pantheon alongside Mao and market reformer Deng Xiaoping by writing his name and political ideology into the party’s constitution.

10. In November last year, China’s top leaders passed an important resolution on the party’s past, braiding Xi more tightly into the CCP’s story. It was only the third such resolution issued in the party’s 100-year history, after two under leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and aimed to consolidate the party’s achievements while providing an ideological roadmap for its continued rule.

(With inputs from AFP, Reuters)