Should term limit for China's presidency remain the same, be extended, or eliminated?

Klon

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BEIJING, Feb. 25 -- The Communist Party of China Central Committee proposed to remove the expression that the President and Vice-President of the People's Republic of China "shall serve no more than two consecutive terms" from the country's Constitution.

The proposal was made public Sunday.
 

N00813

Junior Member
Registered Member
Not good. It seems more likely now that he will stay on after 2023. The carefully orchestrated system of retirement and promotion in the CCP system will be in dangered.
Just a proposal so far. Will have to see if it is rejected or accepted.

I am curious to know who put this proposal up, actually.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
Not good. It seems more likely now that he will stay on after 2023. The carefully orchestrated system of retirement and promotion in the CCP system will be in dangered.
Not good how? Xi is doing an excellent job, especially in fighting corruption. Unlike some of his predecessors, he is truly beloved by the people with exceptionally high public approval, and should have no problems securing more terms even if it were a democratic vote (which is not a type of government that I support for China). Sometimes, with long-term projects and large scale efforts, you need an extension to properly see them through and I want to see Xi stay on to finish them.

My only concern is that if Xi does start to veer in the future, there needs to be some political mechanism to check/replace him. We are nowhere near there yet (if ever) and as things stand, China benefits a great deal more from having him stay on than to automatically replace him for legal formalities but there should be "something" there in case he needs to retire for the good of the country.

As things are now, Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin are two world leaders who are irreplaceable and deserve exceptions to their term limits. For different reasons entirely, I believe Trump should be allowed extra terms as well LOL
 
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Franklin

Captain
Not good how? Xi is doing an excellent job, especially in fighting corruption. Unlike some of his predecessors, he is truly beloved by the people with exceptionally high public approval, and should have no problems securing more terms even if it were a democratic vote (which is not a type of government that I support for China). Sometimes, with long-term projects and large scale efforts, you need an extension to properly see them through and I want to see Xi stay on to finish them.

My only concern is that if Xi does start to veer in the future, there needs to be some political mechanism to check/replace him. We are nowhere near there yet (if ever) and as things stand, China benefits a great deal more from having him stay on than to automatically replace him for legal formalities but there should be "something" there in case he needs to retire for the good of the country.

As things are now, Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin are two world leaders who are irreplaceable and deserve exceptions to their term limits. For different reasons entirely, I believe Trump should be allowed extra terms as well LOL
Not a good idea at all. Are they going to change the law again after Xi leaves after his third term if at all ? If you can change the law back and forth to suit once interest then the law becomes useless. This will have consequences after Xi. Because the next guy after Xi can stay as long as he wants to too. The precedent has been set.

The interesting part about all of this is that this news only appeared in the English language page of Xinhua and not in the Chinese language page. I wonder why.
 

texx1

Junior Member
The interesting part about all of this is that this news only appeared in the English language page of Xinhua and not in the Chinese language page. I wonder why.

Hate to nip the conspiracy narrative angle in the bud. But this new is also posted in the Chinese language. Actually, the Chinese Xiahua page about this news is a lot more detailed. It describes many proposed amendments to the current Chinese constitution.

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Point 14 specifically addresses the proposed change to term limits.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
Not a good idea at all. Are they going to change the law again after Xi leaves after his third term if at all ? If you can change the law back and forth to suit once interest then the law becomes useless. This will have consequences after Xi. Because the next guy after Xi can stay as long as he wants to too. The precedent has been set.

The interesting part about all of this is that this news only appeared in the English language page of Xinhua and not in the Chinese language page. I wonder why.
First of all, a third or 4th term isn't fundamentally different from having 2 terms. It's just a number that indicates the lasting power of the premier. With 2 terms as compared to 3, you decrease the negative impact of a potential poor decision-maker but you also diminish the ability of a great decision maker to enact long term strategies. If you reduce it to one, you amplify those aforementioned points further, and if you increase to 3, you go in the opposite direction. Term number is basically managing risks to benefits. So 2 is just an arbitrary number; it can be 1 or 3 or 4 just as well, which represent different risk vs. benefit management strategies.

Secondly, laws are needed in general but flexibility is needed just as much, if not more so you don't end up limiting yourself with imperfect laws. Of course, you can make the argument of anarchy ensuing from who gets to bend the law and who doesn't but that's the difficulty in expert governing: to make case-by-case decisions properly. A group of imbeciles can follow the laws strictly with no possibility of amendment and a group of barbarians can ignore the laws and do anything they want but in the long run, neither will be successful compared to a society that can intelligently decide when laws need to be strictly enforced and when exceptions need to be made so you don't end up being harmed by your own laws. It's very tricky and takes very smart people in high places to get right but if China is to rise to number one, it will need to navigate this maze.

And lastly, I never said that anybody can stay as long as he wants to. There clearly needs to be mechanisms to ensure that those who bring China success should continue to reign as long as they do so and those who are unable to be removed and replaced as quickly as possible. That is and should be the goal to every presidential system, but it is extremely difficult to produce a solid legal structure to facilitate that so the exact mechanisms will continue to garner debate. The goal is NOT to impose unbreakable limits so that the best premier and the worst both serve equal amounts of time hoping they'll cancel out and we can settle for average; if that is how it is, it is because we have to settle for it due to our inability to achieve what I just mentioned. Once again, it's tricky and takes smart people to run the show properly.
 
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siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Not a good idea at all. Are they going to change the law again after Xi leaves after his third term if at all ? If you can change the law back and forth to suit once interest then the law becomes useless. This will have consequences after Xi. Because the next guy after Xi can stay as long as he wants to too. The precedent has been set.

The interesting part about all of this is that this news only appeared in the English language page of Xinhua and not in the Chinese language page. I wonder why.

I agree. This is a slippery slope and opens a whole can of worms. What's there to stop a person from serving 20 years, 30 years, or even for life. This is actually a catalyst for instability, not vice versa.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
I agree. This is a slippery slope and opens a whole can of worms. What's there to stop a person from serving 20 years, 30 years, or even for life. This is actually a catalyst for instability, not vice versa.
What is wrong with someone ruling for 20, 30, 40 years or life if he is an excellent leader with high morals who genuinely wants nothing but to see his country be the best? This is a country that allies can trust and enter into long-term commitments with. Would you prefer he be replaced with a different idiot every 2 years who needs to leave just as he's getting the hang of things? That's true instability; countries don't even dare enter into long-term deals with you because they're afraid that 18 months later the next guy will cancel it.

Don't interpret what I said to mean that I think leaders should normally govern for life. I mean that there needs to be a mechanism to differentiate between great leaders and poor ones, reducing the term of the poor ones and extending the term of excellent ones as long as they continue to be excellent. That is an ideal system that no country in the world has achieved but China creating a merit-based term limit could be in the right step if it is implemented properly. I can't speak for the future and who might be able to abuse this down the road if the specifics aren't well-designed (and neither can anyone else), but as things stand now, Xi deserves more time to bring more greatness to China.

If they're unable to work out such a complex merit-based term limit system out for now, they might just extend the max term to 3 or even 4, which would simply represent a different risk vs benefit strategy for China, tilting more towards giving power to excellent premiers to enact long-term strategies while detracting from automatically limiting the corruption of poor premiers. If they do this, at least they come out of the gate winning with Xi. After that, might be better, might be worse than the current 2 term limit; don't know.
 
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