Chinese leader Xi Jinping's move to eliminate the two-term limit for the presidency and vice-presidency of the Chinese state reflects his belief, and the belief of cadres and officials, that the much-praised system of Chinese communist governance had failed. As Thomas Friedman of The New York Times wrote in May, “Xi's allies argue that his crackdown on corruption; his repeal of term limits, which positions him to rule for what could be decades; and his tightening of the control that the Communist Party wields over every institution was urgent because collective rule did not work.”
The notion that collective rule was failing is at odds with the widespread view that China's brand of authoritarianism was actually succeeding, a view shared even by prominent regime critics such as Columbia University's Andrew J. Nathan. Nathan, in an influential article in the Journal of Democracy titled “Authoritarian Resilience,” argued in 2003 that the Communist Party had managed, despite everything, to find a winning formula of governance. Authoritarianism, he suggested, may be “a viable regime form even under conditions of advanced modernization and integration with the global economy.”
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