China: President Xi has declared the start of a new era

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China: President Xi has declared the start of a new era

 UK, Sunday 11 March 2018

Image:President Xi Jinping after casting his ballot

Inside the Great Hall of the People, the delegates lined up enthusiastically to pose for photographs, but they were less keen to talk about the vote they were about to cast.

Successive dark-suited officials waved me away, or affected not to hear my question.

For a move we're told reflects the "unanimous" desire of the party and the masses, it proved surprisingly difficult to find anyone prepared to discuss it with me.

But then this was never a forum for debate.

China's National People's Congress is often described as a parliament, but in practice its function is to approve the proposals the Communist Party sends it, not to challenge them - it has yet to vote down a single one.

They went through the motions anyway.

The ballot boxes were examined, the papers handed out, the delegates given identical pencils to protect their anonymity, but the result was never in doubt.

As a jaunty melody played, Xi Jinping led the way to the front of the stage to vote, effectively, for himself - to remove any legal limit to his tenure, and the only constitutional bar to him remaining in power here for life.

Image:President Xi applauds after the parliament passed a constitutional amendment lifting presidential term limit

There was applause, perhaps a faint smile of acknowledgement, and then Xi returned to his seat, for the most part expressionless, as he watched the assembled thousands of delegates make their way to the ballot box to follow suit.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one, the vote was carried: 2,958 for, two against, and three abstained.

It took a little over 10 minutes to erase decades of progress towards collective leadership and institutionalised succession, and put China back on the path to one-man rule.

There is opposition to this amendment, but you won't hear it inside this hall - and outside dissenting voices are being silenced, criticism scrubbed from the internet, with censors deleting banned terms like "Emperor Xi", "I Disagree," and "Xi Zedong".

There was good reason behind the term limit.

It was added to the constitution in 1982 as part of a series of measures following the death of Mao Zedong, intended to guard against too much power being concentrated in the hands of one man here again.

Video:New rules mean China's Xi Jinping could rule for lilfe

Xi Jinping's own family had personally experienced the consequences, suffering badly during Mao's 'Cultural Revolution', the last in a series of disastrous campaigns.

His father was beaten, humiliated, and denounced as a traitor to the party by young red guards, while his sister is said to have been "persecuted to death". Xi himself was banished to the countryside to labour on the land and learn from the peasants.

But now he is publicly dismantling the safeguards that were meant to prevent the rise of another Mao.