China's Removal of Presidential Term Limits

China's 1982 constitution capped the presidency at two five-year terms, ten years total. That rule mattered less for the paper limit itself and more for what it signaled: an institutionalized, predictable way to move power from one leader to the next without a crisis each time. In March 2018, the National People's Congress, China's legislature, approved a constitutional amendment striking that two-term cap. The vote followed the script of China's one-party system: the Communist Party's leadership had already settled on the change, and the NPC ratified it almost unanimously, which is how major decisions typically move through China's institutions. The amendment did not touch Xi Jinping's other posts, General Secretary of the Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, which never had term limits, but it cleared the one office that did.

Before 2018, China had built a norm, not a law, of orderly handoffs. Jiang Zemin gave way to Hu Jintao, who gave way to Xi Jinping, each serving roughly a decade. Removing the cap broke that pattern. Xi took a third term in 2023, and with no institutional deadline forcing a transition, the next succession now depends on Xi's own choices, his health, or internal Party maneuvering rather than a fixed rule everyone can see coming in advance.

This is where the regime-versus-government distinction sharpens. The regime, the Communist Party's monopoly on power, stayed completely intact. What changed was a feature of the government, the formal office and its rules. That is the lesson: swapping out a government rule can still shift how the whole regime operates, because the rule removed was the one mechanism forcing leadership change on a schedule.