Xi Jinping gets historic third term: How the Chinese President became so powerful

China's Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has secured a historic third term as the President of China from the country's Parliament.

The approval from Parliament was just a procedure as Xi Jinping had secured his third term in October 2022, when he was elected as the General Secretary of the Communist Party (CP) and Chairman of Central Military Commission (CMC) for five year term by the Central Committee. 

Jinping has now overtaken the party founder Mao Zedong, who was elected party leader only two times

World's most powerful man? Xi Jinping at the moment is arguably the most powerful man in the world, even ahead of US President Joe Biden. Since coming to power in 2013, Xi has ruled the country like an autocrat.

Soon after being elected President in 2013, he punished nearly 1.5 million government officers, including seven from the top leadership ranks as well as two dozen senior officials on corruption charges.

Xi even sentenced two officials to death on account of corruption charges.He got rid of every opponent in his way over the years, and has placed his allies at top positions in the government.

He positioned himself so strongly that in 2018 he was able to amend the constitution of China by lifting the term limit that applied to his predecessors as President, allowing himself to rule unto death.

President of world's second largest economy: In the last decade, China's economic might has only increased and we can say that the capitalists are a big reason for that. From Apple to Microsoft, Siemens to Volkswagen, all the companies have their production units in China on account of low wages due to China's 1.4 billion population.

Change of balance in international politics: The world order has changed and the reactions to Russian invasion of Ukraine was a stark example of that. Joe Biden did put sanctions against Russia, but Putin didn't bother and still went ahead with his dangerous pursuits.

What's interesting here is that Putin and Xi Jinping had met at the Winter Olympics in Beijing just few days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At that time, Putin understood that the US sanctions wouldn't hit him in the long run and China would be willing to purchase oil and gas from Russia.

In his last two terms Xi Jinping has consolidated his position in China like never before. Here is a short summary of what all he did to become the most powerful President in China's history.

• Cracking down on corrupt officials was his first action which benefited the economy to a great extent. According to Reuters, so far 4.7 million bureaucrats have been investigated.
• He installed trusted allies in charge of human resources management who control key personnel appointments. His first organisation chief was Zhao Leji, whose father worked under Xi's father. It was followed in 2017 by  Chen Xi, a former Xi schoolmate from Tsinghua University.
• He tightened his control on the military since by initiating sweeping reforms and retrenchments.
• He also amended the party constitution in 2017 to include Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
• In 2017, he had made the supreme role of the party by proclaiming in 2017: "Party, government, military, people, education, east, south, west, north, central: the party leads everything. The party also pledged to uphold the "Two Establishes" party-speak for loyalty to him, in a historical resolution passed in 2021.