China
In China, the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s rules govern the terms and tenures of party and state leaders. This chapter recounts the evolution of the party-state’s term-related rules from the Mao (1949–78) to the Deng (1980s–90s) and post-Deng (1990s–2012) eras. Formal rules developed from the 1980s through the 2010s to govern the tenure of party leaders and officials, which led to formal and predictable elite turnovers within the system, up to its very top level. By the turn of century, the paramount leader, who concurrently serves as general secretary of the Party, state president, and chairman of the Central Military Commission, had been brought under the same set of rules. The current president Xi Jinping appears to have opened a new era in which the rules governing the tenure and replacement of the top leader will have to be rewritten. We examine the various possibilities lying ahead.