The Chinese Communist Party has begun selecting delegates for its 21st National Congress in 2027. But there is a striking requirement: Anyone who wants to become a delegate must first demonstrate political loyalty to Xi Jinping.
And these are the very people who will help determine China's next top leadership.
Does this mean Xi is already laying the groundwork for a fourth term as CCP general secretary?
On November 7, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency announced that the CCP Central Committee had issued a directive governing the election of delegates to the 21st Party Congress, scheduled for the second half of 2027.
A total of 2,360 delegates will be selected from 38 electoral units, with the process expected to conclude by the end of June 2027.
But the most revealing part of the directive has little to do with numbers.
It concerns political loyalty.
According to the
, political qualifications must come first. Candidates must demonstrate their understanding and acceptance of the CCP's "Two Establishes" and adherence to the "Two Upholds."
For readers unfamiliar with CCP terminology, the "Two Establishes" recognize Xi Jinping as the core leader of the Party and establish his political ideology as a guiding principle.
The "Two Upholds" require Party members to defend Xi's core leadership position and the authority of the CCP Central Committee.
Candidates deemed politically unqualified will be automatically disqualified, regardless of their other qualifications.
In other words, a candidate may be highly competent, popular, and free of corruption. But if the Party's political vetting process finds that person insufficiently loyal to the leadership centered on Xi, that person cannot become a delegate.
This raises a fundamental question: If accepting Xi's political authority is a prerequisite for becoming a delegate, how independently can those delegates participate in decisions about his political future?
The answer matters because the Party Congress will elect a new Central Committee, which will then select the Politburo, its Standing Committee, and the general secretary.
Xi, who came to power in 2012, is already serving an unprecedented third consecutive term under the post-Mao leadership transition system. If he remains general secretary after the 2027 Congress, he will begin a fourth term.
In 2018, China removed the constitutional two-term limit on the state presidency, eliminating another institutional constraint on Xi's continued rule.
Now, the CCP is organizing its next leadership selection process around a political standard that explicitly affirms Xi's position at the center of the Party.
Chinese political commentator
argues that this effectively embeds the political conditions for Xi's continued rule into the Congress's procedures before the meeting even begins.
There is an important historical distinction, however. The "Two Establishes" requirement is not entirely new. The CCP's Organization Department also cited it during the selection of delegates for the 20th Party Congress in 2022, along with a similar political disqualification rule.
What makes the current directive significant is its timing.
After 14 years in power, Xi is approaching another leadership transition without having publicly identified a clear successor. At the same time, the CCP continues to reinforce his political authority through organizational discipline and ideological requirements.
The delegate selection process also takes place against the backdrop of an extensive purge of senior Party and military officials. At the Fifth Plenum in October, the CCP formally expelled 33 officials, while the Central Committee recorded an unusually high absence rate.
The Party portrays its disciplinary campaigns as efforts to fight corruption and strengthen its organization. But the combination of political vetting, ideological conformity, and extensive personnel purges also raises questions about how much room remains for alternative political views within the leadership.
The CCP says its delegate elections are an exercise in internal Party democracy. Candidates will even be subject to a competitive election system requiring more than 15% additional candidates beyond the available seats.
Yet all candidates must first pass the Party's political screening process.
That distinction is crucial.
An election among pre-approved candidates is not the same as an open competition over the future direction of the Party.
And when the approval process itself requires recognition of the incumbent leader's supreme political authority, the space for challenging that authority becomes even narrower.
None of this constitutes an official announcement that Xi will serve a fourth term. The final leadership decisions will come in 2027.
But the arrangements show that the CCP is preparing for its next leadership selection under rules that place loyalty to Xi at the center of the process.
The question is no longer simply whether Xi wants another term.
It is also whether the Party's internal selection system leaves meaningful room for a different outcome.
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