Xi Jinping’s power has a purpose – one person to see China through its development plans

To interview delegates and officials at the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing, interspersed with being interviewed in the international media about China abolishing term limits for its president, is to inhabit parallel universes.

Delegates and officials focus on clusters of issues from controlling financial risk and reducing pollution to scientific innovation and business stimulation, plus enhancing and institutionalising China’s anti-corruption campaign with a powerful National Supervision Commission. The international media, no surprise, focus on the constitutional amendment ending term limits, assuming President Xi Jinping will now serve in a for-life dictatorship, reminiscent of Mao’s China, the Soviet Union, the Kim family in North Korea and some African countries.

It is no challenge to explain why abolishing term limits is bad for China – dependency on one human being who is not omniscient but is hostage to fortune, fewer and weaker checks and balances, forced conformity in a complex society with no easy answers, etc. The system begins stronger in that hard choices can be made and consistency maintained, but it could become brittle in that officials are more wary and may say things they do not believe.

First, some background. There are three separate issues being conflated: the significance of ending term limits, the intended consequences and the unintended consequences. Though terminating the two-term limit for China’s presidency captures headlines, it is more the symbolic, final step ratifying Xi’s near-absolute power than the big breakthrough itself. Xi’s prior designation as “core” of the Communist Party in October 2016 and the inscribing of “Xi Jinping Thought...” into the party constitution in October 2017 were more meaningful.