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VOA News (1403.2018)

An indefinite term in office for Chinese President Xi Jinping gives China more space to try new ways of seeking unification with self-ruled Taiwan, where most people prefer autonomy, experts say.
China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, confirmed Sunday that a president can serve an unlimited number of five-year terms, down from the previous two term limit. That outcome means Xi, now 64, can legally keep the country’s top job for life.
The leader who renewed pledges in October to seek unification with Taiwan will have more time to experiment with hard and soft ways of reaching his goal, analysts say. Xi has said the issue of Taiwan’s would-be unification with China cannot be passed to the next generation of Communist leaders in Beijing.
“It’s possible that Xi will not push Taiwan to the negotiating table, for he has more time to deal with Taiwan if (he encounters) no external influence,” said Huang Kwei-bo, international affairs college vice dean at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Staunch goal of unification.Taiwan and China have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists lost to the Communists and rebased on the nearby island. Taiwan democratized in the 1980s, and government surveys since 2015 have said most citizens oppose unification with today’s authoritarian China.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has vowed to unify with it, by force if needed. Xi said in October he would pursue peaceful unification with Taiwan under a one-country, two-systems model that Beijing has applied to Hong Kong since the U.K. ceded it to China in 1997.
If Xi keeps the top job for a long time, his Taiwan approach will probably intensify but without substantive changes, Taiwanese ruling party legislator Lee Chun-yi said.

https://www.voanews.com/a/china-taiwan-unification/4297935.html