China president Xi Jinping's legacy will be preserved in constitution

The legacy of President Xi Jinping will be preserved in the nation's constitution by the end of next week by the Communist Party of China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping

Chinese President Xi Jinping. Source: Getty Images

The legacy of China's President Xi Jinping will be preserved in the nation's constitution.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) is expected to enshrine 'Xi Jinping thought' into its constitution by the end of its five-yearly congress next week, according to Chinese state media.

It is set to cement his place in history with the honour only previously accorded to former leaders Deng Xiaoping and Chairman Mao.

But while Mr Xi's new vision laid out his aspirations, it was light on details.
China's most powerful man's message was clear, no one will be left behind, as he was speaking to some of nation's least powerful Communist party members from Guizhou - one of the country's poorest and diverse provinces.

CPC Central Committee Organisation Department minister Qi Yu said they had "organised party members and cadres to study and carry out the essence of General Secretary Xi Jinping's series of important remarks and the new governance concepts, thoughts and strategies".

Summarised in his three-and-a-half-hour opening speech at this week's Communist Party Congress 'Xi Jinping thought' is a new approach to socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The Communist Party is hailing 'Xi Jinping thought' as an alternative to Western capitalism, a framework which allows developing countries like China to modernise while staying true to socialist values.

It is aimed at avoiding a Soviet-style Communist collapse by maintaining both economic growth and the approval of the people.

Central to this theory is control being concentrated in the hands of the president and corruption being tackled head-on.
Unveiling a new national supervisory commission, the CPC is vowing to continue its crusade against corruption, which has already seen more than a million officials punished for misconduct in Mr Xi's first term alone.

"The purpose is to strengthen the party's centralised and unified leadership over the anti-corruption work and build a centralised and unified, authoritative and highly efficient national supervision system," CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection deputy secretary Yang Xiaodu said.

But rights group Amnesty International says the real goal is to guarantee Mr Xi's authoritarian-style rule.

"Xi has never deviated from this objective - skillfully using a popular anti-corruption campaign to methodically take down every rival faction and interest group within the vast Chinese bureaucracy," the group said.

In his address, Mr Xi also threatened Taiwan that Beijing would defeat any of its independence attempts, provoking a response from the island nation.

"The authorities in Beijing should pragmatically face up to the objective existence of the Republic of China (Taiwan) as well as the Taiwanese people's persistence on democratic values and systems," Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council deputy minister Chiu Chui-cheng said.

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3 min read
Published 20 October 2017 9:10pm
Updated 21 October 2017 7:55am
By Katrina Yu


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