Xi Jinping,
China’s most powerful leader in decades, stamped his authority by claiming a third five-year term as Communist Party chief and declining to elevate a clear potential successor.
Mr. Xi emerged first as China’s new seven-man leadership strode onto a red-carpeted dais inside Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Sunday, following a closed-door conclave of roughly 370 senior officials that finalized the membership of the party’s top decision-making bodies.
The line up of the new Politburo Standing Committee, the inner sanctum of power in China, was dominated by Mr. Xi’s allies and protégés, though none of them with the combination of age and experience that would mark them out as a viable successor.
Mr. Xi, 69 years old, received a third term as the party’s general secretary, the government-run Xinhua News Agency said, citing the outcome of a Central Committee vote. While the party doesn’t set term limits on its top political office, Mr. Xi is breaking with the decadelong cycle set by his predecessor, who served two five-year terms as party chief.
The new Politburo Standing Committee lining up before the media on Sunday.
Photo:
TINGSHU WANG/REUTERS
The outcome reinforced Mr. Xi’s status as paramount leader, despite simmering public resentment over his zero-tolerance Covid policies and management of China’s sluggish economy. The lack of a clear successor also suggests that Mr. Xi may seek to extend his rule beyond his third term, which ends in 2027.
Mr. Xi is set to become the third-longest-serving occupant of the party’s top political office. He would trail only
Mao Zedong,
who was party chairman for more than three decades, and
Jiang Zemin,
who served as general secretary for 13 years over 2½ terms, and stayed on as the chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission for roughly two more years. Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader from the late 1970s till his death in 1997, never held office as the titular party chief.
Mr. Xi is also poised to take a third term as China’s head of state in the coming spring. He made this possible in 2018, when he scrapped constitutional limits that prevented the president from serving more than two consecutive five-year terms. The presidency is a largely ceremonial post, with Mr. Xi’s authority stemming primarily from his roles as general secretary and chairman of the military commission.
Write to Keith Zhai at keith.zhai@wsj.com and Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com
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