China Passes Historical Resolution Enabling Xi's Ongoing Rule

A high-level meeting of China’s Communist Party on Thursday declared President Xi Jinping’s undisputed rule of “decisive significance” for the nation, affirming Xi’s iron grip as he prepares for a near-inevitable third term that would extend his rule until at least 2027.

“Establishing comrade Xi Jinping’s position as the core of the Central Committee and the core of the whole party . . . was of decisive significance in advancing toward the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” top officials said at the end of a four-day conclave, or “plenum,” in Beijing that passed a new ruling on party history.

The decision to write a resolution on the “major achievements and historical experience” of the party’s first 100 years makes Xi only the third leader after Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to adjudicate on the past.

In official party lore, he now sits alongside the founding leader of the nation and the man often considered responsible for launching China’s economic reforms as an architect of his own epoch, or, as Xi calls it, a “new era” in the evolution of the party.

The closed-door plenary session of the Central Committee was Xi’s last significant opportunity to gather China’s most senior 370-odd officials before they meet again late next year for a leadership reshuffle in which Xi is expected to further tighten his grip on power.

The Central Committee’s statement called that next meeting “extremely important” because it would set an agenda for China through to the 100-year anniversary of the nation’s founding in 2049.

“The plenum is about past achievements, but it’s really about the future,” said Tony ­Saich, director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University. “By tracing the continuity of the party over 100 years, it is used to show that it was inevitable for Xi to emerge at this time to be the ‘core’ of the party,” he said.