: Chinas Xi Jinping Awarded Third Term as President, Paving Way for Unlimited Rule #WorldNEWS BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping was awarded a third five-year term as president Friday, putting

Chinas Xi Jinping Awarded Third Term as President, Paving Way for Unlimited Rule #WorldNEWS
BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping was awarded a third five-year term as president Friday, putting him on track to stay in power for life at a time of severe economic challenges and rising tensions with the U. S. and others.
The endorsement of Xis appointment by the ceremonial National Peoples Congress was a foregone conclusion for a leader who has sidelined potential rivals and filled the top ranks of the ruling Communist Party with his supporters since taking power in 2012.
The vote for Xi was 2,952 to 0 by the NPC, members of which are appointed by the ruling party.

Xi, 69, had himself named to a third five-year term as party general secretary in October, breaking with a tradition under which Chinese leaders handed over power once a decade. A two-term limit on the figurehead presidency was deleted from the Chinese constitution earlier, prompting suggestions he might stay in power for life.

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No candidate lists were distributed, and Xi and those awarded other posts were believed to have run unopposed. The election process remains almost entirely shrouded in secrecy, apart from the process by which delegates to the congress placed four ballots into boxes placed around the vast auditorium of the Great Hall of the People.
Xi was also unanimously named commander of the 2 million-member Peoples Liberation Army, a force that explicitly takes its orders from the party rather than the country.
In other voting, the partys third-ranking official Zhao Leji was named head of the National Peoples Congress. The vast majority of the bodys legislative work is headed by its Standing Committee, which meets year-round.
A holdover from the previous party Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of political power in China headed by Xi, Zhao, 67, won Xi’s trust as head of the party’s anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, pursuing an anti-graft campaign that has frozen all potential opposition to the leader.
Former Shanghai party boss and member of the last Politburo Standing Committee Han Zheng was named to the largely ceremonial post of state vice president.
Xi, Zhao and Han then took the oath of office with one hand on a copy of the Chinese constitution. The session also swore in 14 congress vice chairpersons.
Xis new term and the appointment of loyalists to top posts underscores his near-total monopoly on Chinese political power, eliminating any potential opposition to his hyper-nationalistic agenda of building China into the top political, military and economic rival to the U. S. and the chief authoritarian challenge to the Washington-led democratic world order.