
China officially scraps term limits on presidency - jsnathan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-approves-plan-to-abolish-presidential-term-limits-clearing-way-for-xi-to-stay-on/2018/03/11/973c7ab2-24f0-11e8-a589-763893265565_story.html
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gred
This is marked as a dupe, but I can't find any other stories on this topic
that are more active / higher-voted. Can someone provide a link if they have
it?

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dang
The best way to answer such a question is HN Search, which is linked at the
bottom of every HN page:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=term%20limit&dateRange=all&typ...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=term%20limit&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&sort=byPopularity)

In this case there are a lot of them:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16457998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16457998)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16465426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16465426)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530555)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563352)

~~~
jsnathan
OP here. Sorry if I misunderstood the guidelines, but these are not the same
stories. The proposal to scrap the term limits was announced two weeks ago,
which is what those stories talk about. This new story is about the proposal
having been approved by the parliament (a couple hours ago). Though I suppose
there was little chance of it not passing, I did think it's a historic vote,
so I thought I'd post this as well.

~~~
dang
They're not technically the same story, but the new information isn't enough
to alter the topic (abolishing term limits of presidency in China), so the
discussion is guaranteed to be the same.

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graeme
How did China manage to maintain a rotating system of supreme leaders for as
long as it did? It's a fairly rare achievement.

~~~
matt4077
China doesn’t have a “Supreme leader”. To conflate North Korea and China in
such a way is terribly ignorant. Just say “head of state” if you’re in doubt
on such matters.

And the issue of title leads to something of an answer: China is (used to be)
run more by committee than a single leader with cult-of-personality authority.
This is reflected in the official title: General Secretary of the Communist
Party (who is also the President, but that role used to be mostly ceremonial).
That, plus a healthy dose of racism, is why you’ll find it hard to name any
two former Chinese politicians by name (cue “Who?” Joke).

That system probably remained stable in much the same way western democracies
remain stable: there were certain rules that, by custom, convenience, or well-
engineered competition between centers of power happened to remain mostly
respected. Even among undemokratic governments, there are huge differences in
how they actually work. China (and also the Sowjet Union after Stalin)
have/had something not entirely unlike a resemblance of rule-of-law with
regards to the political process within each country’s communist parties.

~~~
mikeash
I think the question is, how did it end up like that in the first place?

And as far as I can tell, the answer is that the party leadership was
sufficiently spooked by the craziness of Mao and the chaos of the Cultural
Revolution that they decided to spread out power rather than vesting it
entirely in a single person.

~~~
matt4077
The answer might actually be “communism”. Central to that ideology was a
democratic element, where certain groups (workers of one factory, say) would
elect delegations to similar groups one level up, in a sort of pyramid. This
would repeat all the way to the general committee of the party. “General
Secretary” is a title that pretty clearly denotes a certain lack of power:
compare the UN, where the top post is named the same, very deliberately
indicating their rather beaurocratic leadership function, clearly subordinate
to the Presidents and Prime Ministers selecting them.

Now, obviously no communist country ever came close to actual communism. But
still: if you spend an inordinate amount of the state’s resources on
indoctrination, you will at some point raise a new generation of leaders that
cannot completely shake these stories they were told (and forced to repeat)
during their rise through the ranks. In such a way, lip service becomes
service. These leaders have also risen through the ranks of hundreds such
committees with their endless late-night cigar-smoking and scheming. Anyone
too daring, or too easily bored, will drop out of the competition long before
they get to the actual levers of power. That’s why you get uninspiring
beaurocrats, and the colorful cool dictators like Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein
only ever get to power in their respective “lesser banana republics”

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yareally
There were several discussions earlier this week about it. That would be my
guess.

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mediaOperations
Strap yourselves in for 200+ replies. The chinese sock puppet forum sliding is
about to begin!

~~~
dang
This comment violates the site guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Lots of previous explanation at
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)
if anyone wants it.

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hzhou321
This is the norm for China, and it has worked (for its large part of world
domination history), so nothing to hold your breath for. In that aspect, Deng
Xiaoping was rather an anomaly (although his large part is still the norm).
China produces anomalies every now and then. For anomalies to become the norm
is atypical.

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trendia
If it's the norm, why would China ever put terms limits in in the first place?

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hzhou321
Deng did it, not China. In fact, China do not care about constitution that
much. The leaders do care, as always.

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seanmcdirmid
Term limits came in during the 80s when china when power was much more
distributed among the eight elders.

