Xi Jinping Secures Unprecedented Third Term As China’s President

Xi Jinping Secures Unprecedented Third Term As China’s President

Xi Jinping’s unprecedented third term as China’s president was officially endorsed by the country’s political elite on Friday, solidifying his control and making him the longest-serving head of state of Communist China since its founding in 1949.

Xi was reappointed Friday as president for another five years by China’s rubber-stamp legislature in a ceremonial vote in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People – a highly choreographed exercise in political theater meant to demonstrate the legitimacy and unity of the ruling elite.

He received a unanimous 2,952 votes followed by a standing ovation.

The reappointment of Xi, China’s most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades, was largely seen as a formality, after the 69-year-old secured a norm-shattering third term as head of the Chinese Communist Party last fall.