Dictator
Xi Jinping
China's paramount leader since 2012, ruling a one-party state with presidential term limits abolished in 2018.
Xi Jinping has served as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since 2012 and state president since 2013. In 2018, China's National People's Congress abolished presidential term limits, removing the last formal constraint on how long he could remain head of state, and in 2022 he secured an unprecedented third term as party leader. Under Xi, China has built an extensive digital surveillance and social-credit apparatus, and has been the subject of extensive documentation by Human Rights Watch and the UN regarding mass internment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
Xi has also overseen the dismantling of Hong Kong's political autonomy following the 2020 National Security Law, and has consolidated personal authority to a degree not seen in China since Mao Zedong, with his political philosophy, "Xi Jinping Thought," enshrined directly in the party constitution.