President Xi prepares to be anointed as emperor of all he surveys in China

President Xi’s faintly airbrushed portrait can be seen all over China — on the front pages of the fawning People’s Daily, on the walls of homes built for the poor and adorning souvenirs sold around Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Only Mao Zedong, the Great Helmsman and founding father of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has ever gazed out on the square itself, his giant portrait replaced over the years by fresher copies but never removed or supplanted.

Yet this week Xi seeks to cement his place in history, alongside Mao and to a lesser extent Deng Xiaoping, as an epochal leader and the natural heir to the revolution Mao set in motion.

Hundreds of top Chinese Communist Party members have been meeting behind closed doors in Beijing since Monday, preparing to pass a “history resolution” that not only rewrites the past but maps out a future that may see Xi rule for life.

It is the last such meeting before next year’s congress at which Xi is expected to win a third, potentially unlimited term after successfully pushing to abolish such restraints in 2018.