Chinese leader Xi Jinping formally awarded himself a record-breaking third term as the head of the state, completing his transition into the country’s most powerful ruler in decades at a time of severe economic challenges and rising tensions with the United States and others.
Xi, 69, had already secured a third five-year term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the most powerful post in the nation’s ruling system, last October.
On Friday, roughly 3,000 carefully-picked delegates in China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, approved Xi’s new term as the head of the state.
The reappointment of Xi in the largely ceremonial role is not a surprise. Xi scrapped a two-term limit on the head of the state role by revising the constitution in 2018, prompting suggestions he might stay in power for life….