China formally lifts Xi Jinping's status to most powerful leader in decades

 

The ruling Communist Party has formally lifted Xi Jinping's status to China's most powerful ruler in decades, setting the stage for the authoritarian leader to tighten his grip over the country while pursuing an increasingly muscular foreign policy and military expansion. The move to insert Xi's name and dogma into the party's constitution alongside the party's founders came at the close of a twice-a-decade congress that gathered the country's ruling elite alongside rank-and-file party members. It not only places him in the first rank with past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, but also effectively makes any act of opposing him tantamount to an attack on the party itself.