Head of State Xi Jinping is one of around 3,000 delegates who will gather in the Great Hall of the People in the Chinese capital on Sunday. The National People's Congress meets once a year and is considered the largest legislative assembly in the world. Since Mao, Xi will be the first Chinese politician to serve more than two terms as president. The National People’s Congress abolished a limit to this effect on 11 March 2018. In addition, the era of collective leadership within the party has ended at least since the Communist Party Congress in October last year.

Under Xi, there is an interesting change in the power structures. He systematically breaks down the separation between state and party. To this end, he founded a network of small leadership groups and central commissions in the Communist Party, which are dedicated to different policy fields, such as economic or climate policy. Xi personally chairs most of these commissions, thus breaking or undermining the formal separation between state and party that also exists in China. Whether these parallel power structures within the Communist Party will be expanded remains to be seen.

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