China’s Communist Party proposed on Friday to engrave President Xi Jinping’s guiding philosophy in the country’s Constitution, further cementing his status as its most powerful leader in decades.
Mr. Xi’s ‘thought’ was already enshrined in the Communist Party constitution at the 19th Party Congress in October, elevating him to the same status as modern China’s founder Mao Zedong.
The architect of China’s economic reforms, Deng Xiaoping, is the only other leader whose name appears alongside his guiding principle in both the state and party Constitutions.
The party’s Central Committee proposed at a two-day meeting that “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” should also be added to the state Constitution, said the official Xinhua news agency. The constitutional change must be approved by the National People’s Congress, which is expected to hold its annual plenary session in March.
The forthcoming amendment would need to “enshrine the major theoretical points and major principles and policies stipulated by the 19th Party Congress — especially Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era — into state law,” the body said in a statement released by Xinhua.
A major outcome of the 19th Party Congress was the decision to establish an anti-graft agency, the National Supervisory Commission. The Central Committee noted in its statement that reforms to the state supervisory system would be included in the amendment.
Earlier this week, the party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily further cemented that status by publishing an article that for the first time referred to Xi as lingxiu — a Mao-era honorific with more reverential and spiritual connotations than ordinary monikers.
