(Don't tell Trump) China clears the way for President Xi Jinping to remain president indefinitely

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/world/asia/china-xi-jinping.html
China Moves to Let Xi Stay in Power by Abolishing Term Limit
By CHRIS BUCKLEY and KEITH BRADSHER | FEB. 25, 2018

BEIJING — China’s Communist Party has cleared the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power, perhaps indefinitely, by announcing on Sunday that it wants to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency — a dramatic move that would mark the country’s biggest political change in decades.

The party leadership “proposed to remove the expression that the president and vice president of the People’s Republic of China ‘shall serve no more than two consecutive terms’ from the country’s Constitution,” Xinhua, the official news agency, reported.

With each term set at five years, the Constitution currently limits Mr. Xi, who became president in 2013, to 10 years in office. But the announcement appears to be the strongest signal yet that Mr. Xi, 64, intends to hold onto power longer than any Chinese leader in at least a generation.

“I think this is without a doubt the clearest confirmation we’ve had yet that Xi Jinping plans to stay in power much longer than we thought,” said Jude Blanchette, an expert on Chinese politics in Beijing who works for the Conference Board, which provides research for companies. “We should expect Xi Jinping to be the dominant political force in China for the next decade.”