Xi Jinping strode to the front of the stage with his ballot paper in hand. The result was not in doubt, but the assembled delegates inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing went through the ritual of voting anyway. It was March 2018 and the Chinese parliament had been asked to approve a proposal to remove the term limits on the presidency, the only constitutional barrier to Xi staying in power for life. He went first. The senior officials seated behind him clapped their hands along to a jaunty melody as Xi cast his vote. Then they all lined up to do the same.
It took just minutes to erase four decades of progress towards collective leadership in China. The proposal was approved, with 2,958 votes in favour, two against, and three abstained. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) likes to maintain a simulacrum of dissent, if not the real thing; the parliament has yet to reject a single bill. The presidency is the least important of the three titles Xi holds as the leader of China – along with general secretary of the CCP and chairman of the Central Military Commission – but it was the only one that came with formal term limits. Removing these limits was the clearest signal yet that Xi had no intention of stepping down, as his two predecessors had done, after two five-year terms. Instead, he was dismantling the safeguards put in place after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, which had been meant to prevent the rise of another dictator in China and a return to the dark days of one-man rule.
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