What China's elevation of President Xi Jinping to the Communist pantheon means for the superpower's future

China’s Communist Party formally elevated President Xi Jinping to the same status as party legends Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping on Tuesday, writing his name into the party constitution and setting the nation’s leader up for an extended stay in power.

The unanimous vote to enshrine “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era” in the constitution came on the final day of the 19th Party Congress: a week-long event that takes place every five years, which gathers the party elite in the imposing and cavernous Great Hall of the People on the western side of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The meeting effectively marks the start of Xi’s second five-year-term as party general secretary – but the chances are now higher that this will not be his last.

“The amendment of the party constitution effectively confirms Xi Jinping’s aspiration to be the Mao Zedong of the 21st century – that means a top leader with no constraints on tenure or retirement age,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“The fact that he has become the new helmsman of the ship of state, providing guiding principles for party, state and military, provides the perfect justification for him to stay number one well beyond the normal 10 years,”

The inclusion of Xi’s name in the party’s document makes him only the third Chinese leader to be so honoured, with his ideology joining Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory as a “guide to action”. It will now become compulsory learning for Chinese students, from primary schools through to universities.

China’s Communist Party imposed a system of collective leadership after the death of Mao, scarred by the madness, cruelty and famine the one man had imposed through the disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

As a result, Xi’s two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, ruled through consensus as the “first among equals” at the top of the ladder – and were limited to two terms in power.

Now the party is moving back in the other direction, betting on a man who aims to restore the party’s central role in society, and the nation’s central role in global affairs.

Xi’s power is not unlimited, and many of his key policy measures reflect ideas adopted by the party before he took power. Yet the past week has seen an explosion of sycophancy toward China’s leader, after his mammoth three-and-a-half-hour speech kicked off proceedings last Wednesday. This is a personal style of rule, much like Vladimir Putin’s in Russia.

Throughout the week, senior officials lined up one after the other to abase themselves, lauding Xi’s profound, courageous, insightful masterpiece of a speech, that shone “the light of Marxist Truth” and moved some of them from the bottom of their hearts.

“In retrospect, it was an overwhelming assertion of authority to a degree unseen since Mao,” said Francois Godemont, director of the China-Asia programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Experts say Xi Jinping Thought embodies two important principles: first, that the Party is in control of every aspect of life in China, from the economy to the internet, politics, culture and religion. The Party must be more disciplined, and more responsive to people’s needs, but its leadership must not be questioned.

The second is that China is on a path to become a true global superpower – very much on its own terms.

“Under his reign, there is no more hope of convergence,” said Godemont, referring to the idea that China would become more open, more ruled by law and more democratic, as it became wealthier – that its interests and political system will ultimately converge with those of the West.

The idea of political reform in a Western sense is now firmly out of the window. Xi’s message is one of a nationalist, assertive China: one that he says will not threaten the world – but will resolutely defend its interests.

“By the middle of this century or before, China aims to close the gap economically and militarily with the United States, and become the ultimate arbiter in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Lam.

If Mao’s era was one of revolution and nation-building, while Deng’s was one of reform and opening that set China on the path to becoming a global economic power, Xi’s era is, perhaps, one of control and nationalism.

Deng’s influence on the course of Chinese history was massive, but his power was wielded less explicitly, often from a position behind the scenes. As a result, his “theory on socialism with Chinese characteristics” was not formally incorporated into the party constitution until after his death.

Former leader Jiang’s ideological contribution is recognised in the document as the “Theory of Three Represents”, as is Hu’s “Scientific Outlook on Development”, but neither man is mentioned by name.

© The Washington Post