“Chinese Communist Party Congress set to anoint Xi as president for life”
If you read past the headline, the article goes on to say “We can be almost certain that Xi, as the Communist Party’s general secretary, will be appointed for another five-year term,” and “Technically speaking, since the term limit has been removed, he can stay in power for life, [although] that may require some formal ceremonies after five years.”
Apparently, a theoretical 5 year term that they aren’t even completely sure will happen means for life, and “technically speaking, he can” means he will do so.
I was just going to say we have the same shit here in Canada. But nobody seems to give a shit about that.
I honestly struggle to wrap my mind around the idea of term limits = democracy. Here in the US the only reason we have them is one president did the bare minimum and gave the working class some crumbs and kept winning so they implemented term limits. It seems to almost always be implemented as a way to stop democracy.
The US only has term limits for the president though. Congressional representatives, judges, cabinet secretaries, etc., can all be there as long as they have the money and connections to be there.
Interesting thing to know about term limit is their origin in current politics - straight up from ancient Greece and Rome - they served the purpose of dividing the spoils between the oligarchs, since there were always more angry rich parasites than available offices, but the infighting was creating notorious instability threatening the very foundation of thir oligarchic rule. So the terms were introduced to decrease the conflicts in the ruling class so it can focus on defending their power as a class.
Term limits were originally weapon in the class war and as you can see from the rhetorics around them, not much changed.