Xi Jinping as president beyond 2023 may be good for China – though the West won’t believe it
Tom Plate says China’s move to scrap the presidential term limit cannot be seen purely in black and white terms. Strongman leadership is not reviled in Asia the way it is in the West, and an argument could be made to challenge America’s own belief in presidential term limits
And so the Communist Party of China recommends to the National People’s Congress the removal of China’s rough equivalent of America’s 22nd amendment – two terms at most for the top leader. Anyone who didn’t see this “surprise” coming needs to have her or his China-watcher eyeglass prescription carefully re-examined. Now the way is paved for a long march by incumbent President Xi Jinping, conceivably for as long as he can stand the difficult job of being No 1 for 1.4 billion people, and for as long as – in some sense – the Chinese people can be happy with the notion of him continuing to do it.
Naturally, the reaction in America is already climbing towards the semi-hysterical. A law professor at the respected Fordham University in New York termed the move nothing less than a new step “in the continuing breakdown of political norms that had sway in China’s reform era”.
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The widely admired Susan Shirk, at the University of California, San Diego, takes the dim view that “the risk of policy misjudgments is greater than it has been under any other leader since Mao died”. Concludes Professor Shirk, who in the late 1990s served honourably and well as the deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of worrying about China, Hong Kong and Taiwan: “Xi is now unfettered. He owns the entire policy process.”
Maybe. What we know for sure about this move is that, one, Xi wanted the term limits axed and, two, no one who might not have wanted it was strong enough to stand up against him.
What we don’t know, though, is a much longer list, and this includes whether in fact this will prove such a terrible idea, or even whether by 2023, when the end of his second term would have ticked to an end, Xi will still have enough steel in his stomach to soldier on, not to mention the Olympian will deemed to keep enemies at bay, his age notwithstanding.
So the more positive question that might be asked in the West is whether continuity of leadership by personality will hold China back, as Mao Zedong’s long run did, and at the same time threaten the West and its friends in Asia? Or will there be value for China and the world to keeping one man at the top?
Pictures of President Xi Jinping and the late Mao Zedong overlook a street in Shanghai. Will continuity of leadership hold China back, as Mao’s long run did, or will there be value for China and the world to keeping one map at the top? Photo: Reuters
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In Asia, to generalise, the ideological evil of authoritarianism is not universally accepted. Consider: without the late General Suharto, with all his many faults, a nation left behind as recklessly as Indonesia was by the Dutch when they scampered back to their dykes could not possibly have been held together except by authoritarian will – whether of the left or the right.
