Xi Jinping re-elected as president of China for the third time

 
Today is a historic date, on this Friday March 10, 2023 Xi Jinpin succeeds himself. The day he formally inaugurates his third term as President of the People's Republic of China. An unprecedented fact: Xi had to amend the Constitution and abolish the maximum limit of two terms that applied to his predecessors. In a sense, not even the founder of the People's Republic, Mao Zedong, had a reign as long as the one Xi conquered. From the victory of the communist revolution in 1949 until his death in 1976, Mao had periods of marginalization from real power (for which he took revenge with ferocity). But the third term that matters most to Xi Jinping is not the presidency of the Republic, a mostly formal and representative office. Far more important is the other third term that he secured as secretary of the Communist Party, already at the October congress. Continuity with Mao weighs heavily in this distinction. In China, the party counts more than the state, the party leader is the real authority, even if, to avoid misunderstandings, Xi has preferred to accumulate the office of president. The primacy of the Communist Party, a doctrine consecrated by Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, fundamental in Xi's thought.