Xi Jinping's third term bid undergirded by desire to own legacy of Mao Zedong

Xi Jinping’s bid for a third term as China’s president is undergirded by a desire to create a “personality cult” to own the legacies of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, says Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Michael Shoebridge.

Some 400 Chinese Communist Party officials are currently in a four-day plenum which is expected to adopt a “historical resolution” in celebration of the party’s achievement over the course of it’s 100-year history.

Resolutions, which have previously only been ratified on two occasions, has historically cemented the power of the CCP’s leader.

Mr Shoebridge believes Xi’s latest manoeuvre is an attempt at broadcasting an “image of strength”.

“What Xi is trying to do is own the legacies of Mao and Deng,” he told Sky News Australia.

“Mao had China stand up to the world, Deng made China rich and Xi wants to say, I own both those legacies and I’m making China strong.

“He wants to create a broadcast of this image of strength for the party and for himself and that’s partly because there’s so much weakness and trouble going on inside China right now.

"Xi needs to distract them from that and unify the party behind him before he goes for his third term in the party congress meeting next year: that’s what this is about.”