Electoral Process (or lack of it) in China

National executive leaders are not elected through any direct or competitive elections. The state president is formally elected by the National People’s Congress (NPC) for five-year terms. State president nominates the premier. Premier’s nomination needs to be confirmed by the NPC. In practice, the top CCP leadership decide in advance who is to hold both these positions and announcement is made at the relevant party congress.

The CCP’s seven-member Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), led by the party’s general secretary, sets party and government policy. So, effectively CCP general secretary post supersedes the post of even president in China. Xi Jinping (current president of China) was appointed as general secretary for a third five-year term at the 20th Party Congress held in 2022, paving the way for him to continue in power virtually indefinitely. This marked a significant break from the post–Cultural Revolution practice of upholding a two-term limit for the nation’s highest leadership position.

In March 2023, Xi secured a third term as state president with a unanimous NPC vote. He also serves as chairman of the state and party military commissions. A close ally of Xi, Li Qiang, was named premier in March 2023. By securing a precedent-breaking third term as president of China, Xi Jinping tightened his grip on the world’s second-largest economy as it arises from a COVID slump. Roughly 3,000 members of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp parliament, voted unanimously in the Great Hall of the People for the 69-year-old Jinping in an election in which he was the only candidate.

Xi has taken China on a considerably more authoritarian path since assuming control a decade ago, and he extended his tenure for another five-year term amid progressively adversarial relations with the U.S. and its allies over Taiwan, Beijing’s support of Russia, trade and human rights. Domestically, China faces a very challenging recovery from three years of Jinping’s zero-COVID policy, fragile confidence among businesses and consumers and persisting weak demand for China’s exports.

Jinping had already set the stage for third term way back in 2018 when he got rid of presidential term limits, and has become China’s most commanding leader since Mao Zedong, who founded the People’s Republic. Point to be noted here is that the presidency is largely ceremonial, and Jinping’s main position of power was extended in October 2022, when he got himself reconfirmed for five more years as general secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party.