Xi Set to Secure Third Five-Year Term After Two Senior Officials Exit Leadership Group

Chinese Leader Xi Jinping raises his hand as he votes during the closing session of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party at The Great Hall of People in Beijing, on Oct. 22, 2022. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is all but certain to secure a third five-year term and rule China until at least 2028, after two senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials were not named to the communist regime’s new leadership group.

On Oct. 22, the Chinese regime’s 20th Party Congress, a twice-a-decade political event, came to a close, shuffling in a new group of Chinese officials that make up the regime’s Central Committee, a 200-plus-member body comprised of the Party elite.

Those on the Central Committee can take up seats in the 25-member Politburo, and some in the 7-member Politburo Standing Committee, the communist regime’s highest decision-making body.

69-year-old Xi is among those named to the new Central Committee, according to China’s state-run media.

Missing from the list of the new committee members are Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, 67, the second in the CCP hierarchy, and Wang Yang, 67, the head of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body.

Also gone are Vice Chinese Premier Han Zheng, 68, and Li Zhanshu, 72, chairman of the regime’s National People’s Congress.

All four are members of the Politburo Standing Committee, which is currently headed by Xi.

CCP 

It is unusual for Li and Wang to step aside considering that both have not reached the Party’s unwritten retirement age of 68.

Li Linyi, a China affairs commentator based in the United States, told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that the exit of Li and Wang can be seen as a political victory for Xi, given the two are considered members of a rival political faction known as “tuanpai” or Youth League Faction in the Party.

In other words, Xi has consolidated his power to an unprecedented level within the Party, according to Li Linyi.

As for Han and Li Zhanshu, Li Linyi said that’s to be expected given that they have already reached retirement age.

With four vacancies in the Politburo Standing Committee, Li Linyi said Xi is in a position to fill them with his political allies.

China is scheduled to announce its new leadership or members of the Politburo Standing Committee on Oct. 23 following a plenary meeting, according to China’s state-run media.

Li Linyi added that the focus on China’s new leadership should be turned to Hu Chunhua, who is considered a “tuanpai” member, whether he could take up a seat in the next Politburo Standing Committee after being named to the Central Committee on Saturday.

Hu is currently a member of Politburo and one of the Chinese Vice Premiers.

‘More Human Rights Abuses’ 

As for the future of China with five more years of Xi, rights groups had already issued warnings ahead of the final day of the Party Congress.

On. Oct. 21, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that China’s attacks on press freedom would continue.

“The extension of Xi Jinping’s mandate, if confirmed, is disturbing news for press freedom as it will allow the Chinese leader to carry on the crusade against journalism he set in motion ten years ago,” Cédric Alviani, head of RSF’s East Asia Burea said in a statement.

The group said Xi is pursuing a “new world media order,” in which journalism is being used to disseminate state propaganda, and 149 nations in the world have been “infected by China’s dystopian media model” through the regime’s foreign policy of Belt and Road Initiative.

As a result, Alviani called on democracies to “employ all necessary means to dissuade the Chinese leader from disseminating his dystopian model of society based on censorship, propaganda and surveillance.”

Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, warned China’s human rights situation would deteriorate in a statement issued on Oct. 12.

“Another five years of Xi’s leadership is bad news for the cause of democracy and freedom, and worse news for the Chinese people,” Abramowitz said. “If past is prologue, a third term for Xi will result in more human rights abuses within China and more aggressive suppression of free speech globally, even as his domestic and foreign policies backfire and public outrage intensifies.”