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The Constitution now limits Mr. Xi, who became president in 2013, to two terms in that office, amounting to 10 years. But the party leadership has proposed removing the line that says the president and vice president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms,” Xinhua, the official news agency, reported on Sunday.
By moving so early in his tenure, Mr. Xi, 64, is in effect proclaiming that he intends to stay in office well past 2023, overturning rules of succession in Chinese politics that evolved as the party sought stability following the power struggles to replace first Mao, and then Deng Xiaoping.
“Xi Jinping will certainly continue,” said Zhang Ming, a retired historian at Renmin University in Beijing. “In China, he can do what he wants to do, and this is just sending a clearer signal of that.”
Mr. Xi already serves as the party’s general secretary and the military chief, positions with no term limits.
“This is the next step in the continuing breakdown of political norms that had held sway in China’s reform era,” said Carl Minzner, a professor of law at Fordham University in New York and author of a new book on Mr. Xi’s increasing authoritarianism.
“What are the risks of these shifts?” Professor Minzner said. “In the short term, all the traditional dangers that arise from the excessive centralization of power in the hands of one person. But in the long term, the real question is how far the breakdown in political norms could go.”
Jiang Zemin, the leader who succeeded Deng, was installed during the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and served two terms as president from 1993 to 2003. But he lingered in power until 2004 by retaining control of the committee that runs China’s military.
