Trace the institutionalisation of leadership succession in China since 1978 and evaluate the significance of its partial reversal under Xi Jinping

What this dot point is asking

SEAB wants you to trace how China turned leadership succession from a recurring crisis under Mao into a relatively orderly, rule-bound process during the reform decades, and then to evaluate the significance of the partial reversal of those rules under Xi Jinping, above all the removal of presidential term limits in 2018. The key analytical move is to treat succession as the clearest single test of institutionalisation, because nothing exposes a personalised dictatorship more sharply than how it handles the transfer of power. Your judgement should weigh how far the recent personalisation represents a genuine break with the era's defining achievement, and what risk it reopens.

The answer

The Maoist problem succession was meant to solve

Under Mao Zedong, succession was a source of chronic instability. Power was personal and unlimited, designated successors were purged or died in mysterious circumstances, and Mao's own death in 1976 was followed by an immediate power struggle and the arrest of the "Gang of Four." The lesson the post-Mao leadership drew was that the absence of rules around tenure and succession had made the regime dangerously fragile and prone to convulsions. Institutionalising succession became a central project of the reform era.

Building the norms: collective leadership and limited tenure

From 1978 the Party built a set of norms to constrain any single leader. Deng Xiaoping promoted collective leadership exercised through the Politburo Standing Committee, so that no individual could again dominate as Mao had. The leadership introduced retirement ages for senior officials and, in 1982, a two-term limit on the state presidency was written into the state constitution. Over time an informal but powerful norm emerged that the top leader would serve two five-year terms and then hand over. These devices were designed to make power regular, predictable and shared.

The orderly handovers

The system's success was demonstrated by a sequence of relatively orderly transitions. Deng arranged the rise of Jiang Zemin, and the handover from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002 to 2003, of the Party general secretaryship, the state presidency, and eventually the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, was the first genuinely routine, peaceful, rule-based succession in the history of the People's Republic. The further handover from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping in 2012 to 2013 confirmed the pattern. Political scientists treated these transitions as the strongest single piece of evidence for "authoritarian resilience": a one-party state that had learned to renew its leadership without crisis.

The partial reversal under Xi

Under Xi Jinping, several of these norms have been weakened. Power has been re-concentrated in the top leader: Xi was designated the "core" of the leadership, and "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" was written into the Party constitution in 2017, an ideological status no living leader had held since Mao. Most significantly, in 2018 the National People's Congress amended the state constitution to remove the two-term limit on the state presidency, the single clearest institutional constraint on indefinite tenure. The absence of a clearly designated successor in the conventional pattern compounded the change, reopening the question the reforms had been designed to settle.

How much has actually changed?

The strongest answers avoid two extremes. It would be wrong to say nothing has changed: the removal of the presidential term limit reverses the headline institutional achievement of the reform era and marks a clear shift toward personalised rule. But it would also be wrong to say China has simply returned to Maoism. The Party congresses, the Politburo, the Standing Committee and the broader apparatus continue to function; this is personalisation operating within a still-institutionalised party, not the abolition of institutions. The most accurate description is a partial reversal, a re-concentration of power that hollows out the succession norm while leaving much of the institutional architecture standing.

Why the reversal matters

The significance lies in risk. The whole point of the post-Mao reforms was to remove the danger that leadership transition becomes a destabilising crisis. By weakening term limits and clear succession, the recent changes reintroduce that long-run vulnerability: a system organised around one indispensable leader faces an uncertain and potentially turbulent transfer of power when that leader eventually leaves the scene. The 2018 change is therefore significant not only as a symbol of personalisation but as a structural reopening of the regime's oldest weakness.

Examples in context

Example 1. The Jiang-to-Hu handover, 2002 to 2003. Jiang Zemin stepped down as Party general secretary at the Sixteenth Party Congress in 2002 and as state president in 2003, transferring power to Hu Jintao according to age norms and an agreed timetable. After decades in which leadership change meant a death or a purge, this routine, peaceful transfer was the clearest demonstration that the Party had institutionalised succession, and it became the textbook case of reform-era political maturity.

Example 2. The 2018 removal of presidential term limits. At its 2018 session the National People's Congress amended the state constitution to delete the clause limiting the state presidency to two terms. The change, made with almost no public deliberation, removed the single most concrete institutional constraint on indefinite tenure and signalled the shift toward personalised leadership under Xi Jinping, reopening the very succession question the post-Mao reforms had been built to close.

Try this

Q1. Identify two institutional devices the Party used to regularise succession after Mao. [4 marks]

• Cue. Collective leadership through the Politburo Standing Committee and a two-term limit on the state presidency in the 1982 constitution, alongside retirement ages.

Q2. Explain why the orderly handovers of the 1990s and 2000s were seen as evidence of authoritarian resilience. [12 marks]

• Cue. They showed a one-party state renewing its leadership peacefully and predictably, the Jiang-to-Hu transition of 2002 to 2003, removing the instability that had marked succession under Mao.

Q3. "The personalisation of power under Xi Jinping has undone the political reforms of the post-Mao era." How far do you agree? [20 marks]

• Cue. Argue the 2018 term-limit removal and 2017 ideological elevation gut the succession norm; balance with the persistence of Party institutions; judge as partial reversal that reopens the regime's oldest vulnerability.