China’s Xi Jinping Takes Third Term as President with Eye on U.S.

Chinese leader will formally become longest serving head of state since 1949, as tensions build with Washington

· Mr. Xi is set to become China’s longest serving head of state since the Communist victory in 1949 after the country’s rubber-stamp legislature formally vested him with another five years as president on Friday.

· Mr. Xi derives most of his powers from his roles as head of the party and the military, but he has used the largely ceremonial presidency to cast himself as China’s face to the world—fronting an assertive foreign policy.

· Mr. Xi is likely to step up foreign travel this year, in part to repair relations strained by geopolitical tensions.

· concerns that China was drifting back toward Mao-style autocracy.

· Cai Qi, No. 5 in the party hierarchy, is a front-runner to become the director of the Central Committee General Office, a powerful organ that handles document flow, scheduling and security for top party leaders, according to people close to the leadership.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as his country’s head of state, completing a transition into the second decade of his rule as he seeks to reassert himself as a global statesman and navigate an increasingly fractious rivalry with the U.S.

Mr. Xi is set to become China’s longest serving head of state since the Communist victory in 1949 after the country’s rubber-stamp legislature formally vested him with another five years as president on Friday. His reappointment, approved unanimously by more than 2,900 lawmakers assembled in Beijing, had been considered a formality after the 69-year-old took a norm-breaking third term as Communist Party chief last fall.

Mr. Xi derives most of his powers from his roles as head of the party and the military, but he has used the largely ceremonial presidency to cast himself as China’s face to the world—fronting an assertive foreign policy to pursue what he sees as his nation’s rightful standing as a great power.

People familiar with Mr. Xi’s thinking say that the leader has expressed a growing sense of pessimism about relations between China and the U.S., and that he believes that talk in Washington of a potential conflict between the two superpowers may ultimately prove to be a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Earlier this week, he issued an unusually blunt rebuke of American policy in remarks to a political advisory body that directly accused Washington of leading a containment campaign against China. The following day, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang warned in a news briefing that “there will surely be conflict and confrontation” if the U.S. doesn’t change course.

Some analysts say Mr. Xi may seek to define his legacy—and stake his claims to being an exceptional leader—through bold action over the next five years.

“This certainly will involve pushing through effective party leadership in every realm domestically, ‘standing tall’ in foreign policy, and being prepared for robustly defending Chinese interests internationally,” though such an approach carries significant risks, said Daniel Leese, a professor of Chinese history at the University of Freiburg in Germany.

The State Council Information Office, which handles press inquiries for the Chinese government and state leaders, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Xi is likely to step up foreign travel this year, in part to repair relations strained by geopolitical tensions and his Covid-induced hiatus from international trips, according to people familiar with Chinese foreign policy. He is preparing to visit Moscow in the coming months, and potentially some European countries as well, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier.

Mr. Xi faces daunting challenges in his third term, in particular beyond China’s borders. The Chinese leader emerged last fall from more than two years of self-imposed pandemic isolation into a world that has grown more hostile to China’s interests, due in large part to manoeuvring by the U.S., which has rallied allies in Europe and Asia to curb Chinese access to critical technologies and press Beijing over its continued support for Moscow following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Mr. Xi has been gradually girding the country for confrontation with the U.S. When Chinese officials were setting economic targets for 2022, Mr. Xi told them to ensure that China’s gross domestic product expands faster than that of the U.S., as a way to demonstrate the superiority of its one-party system over American democracy. China’s GDP appears to have grown more than the U.S. in 2022: 3% vs. 2.1%. He has also beefed up the Chinese military and accelerated an expansion of its nuclear arsenal to guard against Washington’s perceived efforts to suppress China.

Chinese officials and diplomats say that they are unable to discuss anything significant with their American counterparts without a clear directive from Mr. Xi. One high-ranking former Chinese diplomat said that, in the current climate, few senior officials are willing to smile while posing for photos with Americans.

Mr. Xi’s comments about the U.S. this week, which were left out of official English-language reports, help him deflect attention from challenges he faces at home, including sluggish economic growth and political fallout from his abrupt pivot from harsh Covid controls. Still, barring a full-blown financial crisis or other such catastrophe, his domestic position appears secure.

Before Mr. Xi took a third presidential term, no one had held office as China’s titular head of state for longer than 10 years since Mao Zedong proclaimed the dawn of the People’s Republic more than seven decades ago. This was in part due to constitutional term limits imposed in 1982, as China sought to install safeguards against one-man rule and recover from policy disasters it suffered during Mao’s mercurial dictatorship.

Mr. Xi scrapped the two-term limit on the presidency in 2018, ensuring he could stay on as head of state beyond the 10-year cycle. The change brought presidential tenures in line with Mr. Xi’s more powerful posts of party chief and military-commission chairman, which aren’t subject to formal term limits.

That power play stunned many party insiders and ordinary Chinese, sparking concerns that China was drifting back toward Mao-style autocracy. Officials argued that the change ensured that Mr. Xi can exert the “centralized and unified leadership” that China needs to navigate complex challenges and achieve a national renewal.

From Mr. Xi’s perspective, the presidency “could provide a political platform for another official to raise their profile, influence policy-making, and implicitly present themselves as a potential alternative to Xi,” said Neil Thomas, a researcher who will soon start as a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “A separate president challenging Xi’s authority would be unlikely, but not impossible, so why take the risk?

Since 2018, Mr. Xi has continued to centralize power in his own hands, an effort he has justified as necessary to overcome bureaucratic stasis. Late last month, he and other senior officials approved a restructuring of party and state institutions that would further entrench the party’s control over the design and implementation of policy. Parts of that plan related to state agencies were passed by legislators on Friday.

With Mr. Xi reasserting the party’s dominance over state and society, “the real risk is that as China steadily slides back towards a one-man political system with Maoist overtones, features that characterized Chinese politics in the 1950s and 1960s—such as elite political instability and policy disasters—will also begin to rise,” said Carl Minzner, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Party insiders say Mr. Xi may flex his clout by appointing a fellow member of the party’s inner sanctum, the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, as his chief of staff.

Cai Qi, No. 5 in the party hierarchy, is a front-runner to become the director of the Central Committee General Office, a powerful organ that handles document flow, scheduling and security for top party leaders, according to people close to the leadership.

A subordinate to Mr. Xi during their earlier careers in regional governments, Mr. Cai now oversees the party’s propaganda and censorship apparatus. If Mr. Cai becomes General Office director, he would be the highest-ranking official to be appointed to this post since the Mao era.