It’s hard to be happy about the developments in China overnight with Xi Jinping. 

He has just managed to turn himself into a modern Mao Zedong. 

It’s a bit technical but essentially what he’s done is manage to pass a very, very rare document at a party meeting.   

It makes him only the third Chinese leader in history to pass a ‘historical resolution’. 

The others are party founder Mao Zedong and his successor Deng Xiaoping. 

Now what that means is Xi is now essentially a modern hero in China and if he wants to, he probably gets to stay as Chinese leader for life. 

This is not really a surprise to anyone who’s watched him for a while.

He’s clearly had designs on rule-for-life.

But it’s still not entirely welcome to the rest of us.

Because look at China under him.

Do we like it? 

Not really.

I mean sure he’s managed to clean up the air pollution a heck of a lot.

He’s made commitments on climate change as recently as yesterday, which is sort of hopeful.

But then he’s also the guy slapping tariffs on Australia for getting cheeky.

He’s also the guy getting really aggressive towards Taiwan.

He’s the guy who’s cracked down on Hong Kong.

He’s got the Uighurs in concentration camps.

He’s banned the kids from playing online games on weekdays.

He’s ruined the boss of Alibaba – Jack Ma’s – financial life by forcing him to give up his company after speaking out.

And he’s promising to start redistributing wealth throughout China. 

This is a guy who is pretty full noise communist and autocratic. 

In China, there was a rule that presidents could only serve for two terms.

But that was scrapped in 2018.

And it’s widely expected that he’s going to try for a historic third term next year when the Communist Party’s National Congress meets. 

This just makes that third term more likely because how can you say no to the modern Mao Zedong? 

I feel like we may as well start shelving any hope that China will liberalise any further in the near future or get easier to deal with politically.

Because if this is how China’s been under Xi, then this is probably how China will stay under Xi.

And by the looks of things, there’s a very good chance that China is now staying under Xi Jinping.