Chinese leader Xi Jinping was awarded a third five-year term as president Friday, putting him on track to stay in power for life. The endorsement of Xi's appointment by the ceremonial National People's Congress was a foregone conclusion for a leader who has sidelined potential rivals and filled the top ranks of the ruling Communist Party with his supporters since taking power in 2012. The vote for Xi was 2,952 to 0 by the NPC, members of which are appointed by the ruling party.
The expected appointment by China's rubber-stamp parliament comes after he locked in another five years as head of the Communist Party (CCP) and the military -- the two more significant leadership positions in Chinese politics -- in October.Since then, 69-year-old Xi has faced some challenges, with mass protests over his zero-Covid policy and its subsequent abandonment that saw countless people die. His reelection is the culmination of a remarkable rise in which he has gone from a relatively little-known party apparatchik to the leader of a global superpower.Adrian Geiges, coauthor of the biography titled "Xi Jinping: The Most Powerful Man in the World", told AFP he did not think Xi was motivated by a desire for personal enrichment, despite international media investigations having revealed his family's amassed wealth.