Solidifying power

On Sunday, China’s top leadership proposed a change to the country’s constitution that would remove the two-term limit for the president and vice president. The change is likely to be made into law at the “Two Sessions” governmental summit this month.

The development is not a surprise. For years, President Xi Jinping has been amassing power as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the chairman of the Central Military Commission, and the head of at least 10 other groups. At last year’s Communist Party National Congress, Xi took the unprecedented step of not naming a successor. He’s also added the political philosophy of “Xi Jinping Thought” into the constitution, making him the most powerful leader since Chairman Mao Zedong.

Late Communist leader Deng Xiaoping put the two-term limit in place to prevent another dictator like Mao, who surrounded himself with lackeys and silenced dissent, leading to disastrous policies such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Xi has already used his anti-corruption campaign to arrest political enemies and filled the Communist Party leadership with yes men.

Sunday’s news led to a flurry of memes and posts by Chinese netizens criticizing the decision. Most of the posts were quickly deleted by censors. One popular meme showed a photo of Winnie the Pooh (who many believe shares a resemblance with Xi) hugging a giant pot of honey, with the caption “Find the thing you love and stick with it.” According to China Digital Times, censors banned words including “disagree,” “personality cult,” “shameless,” and “Disney.” Even the letter “N” was censored—one China expert believes it was because the government fears the letter will be used as a variable to indicate “n terms in office.”

Meanwhile, Christian human rights lawyer Li Baiguang died at the Number 81 People’s Liberation Army Hospital in Nanjing on Feb. 26, a few hours after entering for a minor stomachache. The death, which doctors claimed was due to liver failure, raised suspicions as the 49-year-old Li was not known to have a history of liver disease, did not drink alcohol, and had looked healthy just weeks earlier.

On Feb. 8, Li attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., along with several other religious freedom advocates, according to Bob Fu of ChinaAid. Fu, who had known Li for more than a decade, believes his friend was “murdered by the Chinese Communist Party.” The Chinese government has a history of dissidents dying of medical causes while in custody, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and Christian pro-democracy activist Yang Tianshui.

Li represented illegally arrested pastors and farmers who had been forcibly evicted from their land. He also educated pastors and farmers about their legal rights. Because of his work, Li met former President George W. Bush three times and in 2008 received the Democracy Award from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Back in China, his work received punishment rather than accolades. Since 2004, officials have threatened, detained, and beaten Li. Most recently in October, officials in Zhejiang province kidnapped Li, beat him, and forced him to leave the region because of his defense of farmers, according to ChinaAid.

“We do not know for certain whether those injuries may have contributed to his declining health, but the Chinese government should, as a party to the UN Convention Against Torture, conduct a prompt and impartial investigation to determine whether those injuries may have played a role in his untimely death,” said William Nee of Amnesty International. Li leaves behind a wife and an 8-year-old son.

For more about Li, see this article in Democracy Digest, which lists some of his work in defending house churches.

Christian rapper in China: Five years ago WORLD profiled Chinese-American rapper Jin Au-Yeung (known as MC Jin) following his rise and fall in the hip-hop world before professing Christ in 2008. Likely because of his clean and uplifting lyrics, producers invited him to compete on the popular Chinese reality show The Rap of China last year, and MC Jin has since amassed a large following in mainland China. It’s a great platform for a man who has described a personal transformation through Christ: “The beauty of coming into a relationship with Christ is that nothing else defines you but being a child of God and being loved by God,” MC Jin told WORLD in 2013. “It’s not based on performance, how many records I sell, how many battles I won.”