By Alexander Smith -
NBC News
Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to dominate the future of his country.
To do this, you are putting a new twist on your past.
The Communist Party adopted a landmark resolution on its past and achievements on Thursday, according to the official Xinhua news agency, placing Xi alongside Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping as the only leaders to have presided over such a resolution in 100 years. history of this autocratic formation.
Experts say the "landmark resolution" will pave the way for the 68-year-old Xi to secure an unprecedented third term next year and rule China for life.
On display, Chinese President Xi Jinping next to an exhibit depicting medical workers' fight against coronavirus at the Museum of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, on November 11, 2021.Carlos Garcia Rawlins / REUTERS
The decision came at the end of the sixth plenary session of the party's Central Committee, a mostly male group of more than 300 leaders.
It is the last major meeting before next year's party congress, at which Xi's future will be decided.
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He is the third leader to have a historic resolution passed during his presidency, after Mao and Deng.
Xi's political philosophy - called "Xi Jinping Thought" - is already being woven into Chinese society, and was added to educational textbooks from elementary school to university.
The landmark resolution will further cement his personal leadership as a defining feature of Chinese politics for years and possibly decades.
The resolution will be
"Xi's attempt to further consolidate his power and define his historical legacy in the party's history
,
"
said Jinghan Zeng, professor of international studies at Lancaster University in the UK, before the plenary session.
In the weeks leading up to the meeting, state media praised Xi more effusively than usual.
A comment in the People's Daily, the party's flagship newspaper, described the leadership as the "most critical condition in the face of great events and historical tests."
Safeguarding Xi's "central position" and the party's general authority, he said, were "the fundamental guarantees for obtaining new victories" in China's modernization drive.
Mao Zedong greets the Army of the "Cultural Revolution" in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on August 18, 1966. Hulton Deutsch / Corbis via Getty Images
Both Mao and Deng used their landmark resolutions to criticize what had happened before: Mao, in 1945, asserting his dominance as ruler at the birth of Communist China, and Deng, in 1981, carefully criticizing Mao's mistakes and paving the way. for further economic liberalization.
But Xi's resolution is expected to be more of an eulogy for what Chinese state media have called "the major historical achievements and experiences" of the 100-year regime, and by extension the last decade with him at the helm. .
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That includes the Mao era, which Xi has previously championed despite the millions who starved to death in the Great Leap Forward, Mao's disastrous attempt in the late 1950s and early 1960s to rapidly industrialize society. China, and the brutal purges of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976.
Along with Mao and Deng, Xi has already positioned himself among the most powerful leaders in post-revolutionary Chinese history.
The removal of the two-term limit for presidents in 2018 has allowed him to remain in office indefinitely.
Chinese peasants on a communal farm in the 1950s. Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Whether that actually happens will be decided next year at the party's congress, an event held twice a year and where China's top leaders are named.
Between those meetings, the party holds seven plenary sessions, each with its own theme.
In theory, these sessions are an opportunity for the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's most powerful body, to propose new policies for review.
Indeed, in the era of strongman Xi, allow the president
"assert dominance"
while only create "public illusion of a collective government ,
" according to
a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a
think tank
based in Washington .
"The sixth plenary sessions are not necessarily the most important annual meetings of the Communist Party," said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University in London.
"But this is very, very important," he added.
"The only thing that can stop Xi now is internal resistance in the higher echelons of the party,
if he stumbles or makes some other big mistake," he said.
Xi Jinping led the events marking the 110th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution in Beijing earlier this year. Xinhua News Agency via Getty Image
These plans come amid China's growing power internationally.
The country will become the world's largest economy in a decade.
Your consumption of coal will determine the global fight against climate change.
And it continues to face the United States in disputes ranging from trade and intellectual property to human rights and the status of Taiwan.
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And with Xi at the helm, China has become increasingly authoritarian, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit's annual ranking index.
It has already started to turn the page on a new chapter in Chinese history, in which "the goal is to create a 'great modern socialist nation', as articulated by Xi, by 2035," he said in an online presentation last month. Andrew Polk, Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
While Deng opposed Mao's cult of personality, Xi has amassed more personal power than anyone else since the country's founder.
Under his tenure, tens of thousands of officials - including Xi's political rivals - have been investigated for alleged corruption, the Chinese military has been drastically overhauled and modernized, and the country has moved away from low-end manufacturing and is becoming into a technological powerhouse.
Then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping wears a cowboy hat gifted to him by his hosts while attending a rodeo during his 1979 state visit to the United States.Dirck Halstead / Getty Images
In recent months, Xi has renounced the growth at all costs doctrine of his predecessors and focused on the motto of "common prosperity," going after China's tech giants and super-rich with the promise of greater distribution. of the incomes.
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It's not that "Xi Jinping is a bleeding-hearted liberal," Polk added.
"His thinking is that a strong country does not have great economic inequality, because that leads to divisions in the population."