Why is “president for life” in China such a big deal?

[bytebuster]

Щоб двічі не вставати, на Стеку відкрито сайт Quantum Computing. Воно поки що private beta, але можу надіслати інвайт, якщо попросите.

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Написав тут для Політики.СтекЕксчендж.
Q: Why is “president for life” in China such a big deal?

"Great Leap Backward" was the title announcing the term limit removal in China. This BBC article tells us more about this:

The constitution has been altered to allow Xi Jinping to remain as president beyond two terms and they would not have gone to this much trouble if that was not exactly what he intended to do.

I am wondering why it is this so important.

[…]

Question: Why "president for life" in China is such a big deal?

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A:

Why "president for life" in China is such a big deal?

— Because the increasing shift towards a dictatorship state¹ may trigger a chain of uncontrolled events that, in turn, would undermine the Western investments and the international trade.

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TL;DR

The logic is fairly simple:

1. In any country, the government is a mixture of various groups of influence;
2. Individuals (or small groups) tend to make mistakes, but the looming risk of losing power make the ruling faction to listen up to the opposition: to the electors if there are elections, or at least, to the opposition factions existing in the same political party; this is how, basically, the self-regulation works everywhere;
3. The absence of the opposition makes mistakes unnoticed; One obvious example, the nationalization of foreign assets can be very tempting, or a political/military demarche would lead to sanctions imposed;

4. For years, China was considered an undemocratic country, and this almost zeroed its trade with the West. However,

   Throughout the 1980s, the normalization of political relations between the two countries and China’s economic reforms paved the way for acceleration in the American-Chinese transfer of goods, values, ideas, personnel, and technology. — source.

   Here's how it looks like:

   

In 1978 the total value of China’s import and export was only 20.6 billion U.S. dollars […]
In 2010 the total value of China’s import and export reached 2.974 trillion U.S. dollars, 144 times as much as that in 1978 […]
— The State Council of the People's Republic of China

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Summary

To a great extent, the growth of the Chinese international trade is a result of political and economic reforms in China.

Stepping back would impose numerous risks to the international companies who build their business around the trade with China. Therefore, they consider such a drastic constitutional change a "Great Leap Backward", straight to 1980's.

That's why it's a big deal.

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¹ — it does not actually matter whether or not this constitutional change makes China a dictatorship. It only matters how the businesses perceive it.

Comments

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[ukurainajin]

Чудово написано. А я знову все проґавив. Дозволили довічно сидіти? Капець, нащо це вони…

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[bytebuster]

У новинах цього не дуже згадують. У мене буде в дайджестах, але сильно пізніше, бо матеріалів і так забагато.