Xi’s lifelong presidency should be opposed: MAC head

• By Chen Yu-fu and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

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People of conscience should support calls to end Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) unlimited presidential term, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday.

Chiu made the remarks in response to media queries for comment about a petition reportedly circulating on Monday among Chinese university students from 14 institutions, including Peking University, urging the reinstatement of term limits for Chinese presidents.

Monday was also the opening day of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party’s plenary meeting.

The entrance to Peking University in Beijing is pictured on Nov. 16, 2022.

Photo: AP

The petition, titled: “A Joint Appeal from a Group of University Students in the Republic,” was first posted on a Chinese-language Web site.

The petition, which was quickly taken down, demanded restoring constitutional term limits on China’s leaders and defining the office’s roles and powers.

It also called for initiating democratic constitutional amendments by convening a national conference of the people and improving the mechanisms for election, supervision and recall processes, and protecting spaces for people to discuss public affairs.

The open letter has also been published on other Web sites.

Chinese university students were “confounded and disturbed” by the authorities’ abolition of the constitutionally mandated term limits for the office of the Chinese president and vice president, the petition said.

“We deeply understand stability and continuity are needed by the nation for its development, but the source of stability should be the predictability of institutions, not dependence on an individual,” it said.

The party should reform itself to ensure that power is subject to term limits and checks, and respect the people’s right to criticize and advocate for public affairs, it said.

Xi in March 2018 oversaw the process for constitutional amendments that made him president for life, an act that allowed him to consolidate power and weaken institutional constraints.

A Radio Free Asia report said it was unable to determine whether the open letter originated in China, as the Siyuan Lake BBS Web site was hosted in South Korea, and no personal name was used.

In Taipei, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that “every intellectual possessing a conscience would support the open letter,” regardless of its origins.

Chinese professors he had met in 2017 before the freeze in cross-strait exchanges had made similar objections to Xi’s move to make himself president for life, Chiu said.

The academics at the time said political tradition demanded that Xi nominate a successor as China’s president, not seek additional terms, he said.

Chinese intellectuals absolutely cannot accept Xi’s presidency for life, Chiu said.

However, after the Chinese Communist Party consolidated power around a single leader, the intellectuals’ ability to correct political errors “disappeared entirely,” Chiu said.

Screen grabs obtained by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) showed the petition had appeared in at least 17 forums with links to Chinese universities.