BEIJING (AP) — In a rare public expression of dissent in China, a well-known political commentator and a prominent businesswoman have penned open letters…
BEIJING (AP) — In a rare public expression of dissent in China, a well-known political commentator and a prominent businesswoman have penned open letters urging lawmakers to reject a plan that would allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely.
Their impassioned statements on a popular messaging app were circulated widely after the ruling Communist Party announced a proposal Sunday to amend the constitution to scrap term limits on the president and vice president.
In a statement Monday on WeChat to Beijing’s members of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Li Datong, a former editor for the state-run China Youth Daily, wrote that lifting term limits would “sow the seeds of chaos.”
“If there are no term limits on a country’s highest leader, then we are returning to an imperial regime,” Li told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “My generation has lived through Mao. That era is over. How can we possibly go back to it?”
Wang Ying, a businesswoman who has advocated government reforms, wrote on WeChat that the Communist Party’s proposal was “an outright betrayal” and “against the tides.”
“I know that you (the government) will dare to do anything,” she wrote, “and one ordinary person’s voice is certainly useless. But I am a Chinese citizen, and I don’t plan on leaving. This is my motherland too!”
In a message that was swiftly deleted, sociologist Li Yinhe called the removal of term limits “unfeasible” and would “return China to the era of Mao.”
Li added, however, that delegates to the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, are likely to pass the amendment unanimously since “they aren’t really elected by the people, therefore they don’t represent the people in voting, but will vote according to the leadership’s design.”
It wasn’t clear who deleted Li’s message, but official censors have been working assiduously to scrub criticisms of the amendment from the internet.
