A People’s Congress recap

China’s 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) ended on Tuesday, capping an eventful two weeks that cemented President Xi Jinping’s position as the strongest leader of China since Mao Zedong. In a move reminiscent of North Korean media, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV zoomed in on delegates with tears streaming down their faces as Xi was elected for his second five-year term.

Here are some notable changes legislators made during the governmental summit:

•The nearly 3,000 delegates voted to amend the Chinese Constitution, lifting the term limit for the president and vice president. That means Xi will likely remain president for life.

•Lawmakers ratified the inclusion of “Xi Jinping Thought” in the constitution, the first time since Mao that a living president has enshrined his name in the constitution.

•Wang Qishan, Xi’s close ally, was named vice president. Wang was previously in charge of an anti-corruption campaign that saw 1.34 million officials charged with corruption, including many of Xi’s political rivals. Last fall 69-year-old Wang stepped down from his position on the Politburo Standing Committee because he is past retirement age. Yet now he is set to become China’s most powerful vice president and could push Xi’s rival, Premier Li Keqiang, to the background.

•Liu He, another close friend of Xi’s, will become the vice premier and be in charge of economic policies and financial issues. Liu, who received a master’s of public administration at Harvard, was the mastermind behind China’s economic shift toward more sustainable consumption-based growth.

•Yi Gang will become chief of China’s central bank. Yi earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois and taught at Indiana University. He will work on financial reform—encouraging foreign investment in China’s markets and reforming monetary policy. In China, the central bank is under the authority of the president.

•During Xi’s nationalistic closing speech, he spoke strongly against Taiwan and Hong Kong independence efforts: “All acts and tricks to separate the country are doomed to fail and will be condemned by the people and punished by history.” This came as a response to U.S. President Donald Trump signing the Taiwan Travel Law, which allows visits between officials of Taiwan and the United States, changing an unwritten rule that high-level Taiwan officials could not come to Washington. D.C. (Read more on the Taiwan Travel Act at The Diplomat.)

This year’s National People’s Congress can be seen as a turning point, the moment Xi laid bare his intention to move China back toward a repressive dictatorship rather than down the liberalization route many in the West had imagined. For starters, state newspapers last weekend described Xi in the same glowing tones as they once described Mao. “Helmsman of the country, leader of the people,” read a People’s Daily headline.

Livestreaming the rural life: A Chinese video app called Kuaishou has become popular among young people in less developed parts of China. With 700 million users, Kuaishou allows people to livestream their everyday lives: farming, cooking, dancing, singing, painting, or anything else. Because of its popularity among the lower class, when Beijing officials evicted tens of thousands of migrant workers from the city last winter, the app filled up with videos of migrants recording what was happening. While censors immediately descended on similar content posted to more prominent social media sites, it took a week before censors blocked the videos on Kuaishou.