Paramount leader in the context of "General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party"

Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus the paramount leader of China, since 2012. Since 2013, Xi has also served as the president of China. As a member of the fifth generation of Chinese leadership, Xi is the first CCP general secretary born after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

The son of Chinese communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi was exiled to rural Liangjiahe Village, Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province, as a teenager following his father's purge during the Cultural Revolution. He lived in a yaodong in the village of Liangjiahe, where he joined the CCP after several failed attempts and worked as the local party secretary. After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces. Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, before becoming governor and party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. Following the dismissal of the party secretary of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to replace him for a brief period in 2007. He subsequently joined the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) of the CCP the same year and was the first-ranking member of the Central Secretariat in October 2007. In 2008, he was designated as Hu Jintao's presumed successor as paramount leader. Towards this end, Xi was appointed the vice president and vice chairman of the CMC. He officially received the title of leadership core from the CCP in 2016.

Censorship in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is mandated by the country's ruling party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is one of the strictest censorship regimes in the world. The government censors content for mainly political reasons, such as curtailing political opposition, and censoring events unfavorable to the CCP, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, pro-democracy movements in China, the persecution of Uyghurs in China, human rights in Tibet, Falun Gong, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since Xi Jinping became the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (de facto paramount leader) in 2012, censorship has been "significantly stepped up".

The government has censorship over all media capable of reaching a wide audience. This includes television, print media, radio, film, theater, text messaging, instant messaging, video games, literature, and the Internet. The Chinese government asserts that it has the legal right to control the Internet's content within their territory and that their censorship rules do not infringe on their citizens' right to free speech. Government officials have access to uncensored information via an internal document system.

The president of China, officially the president of the People's Republic of China, is the state representative of the People's Republic of China. On its own, it is a ceremonial office and has no real power in China's political system, though since 1993, the post has been concurrently held by the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission, who is China's de facto top leader. While the office has many of the characteristics of a head of state, the Constitution of China does not define it as such. The Chinese president was the third to fifth highest-ranking position when it was re-established in 1982.

The presidency is a part of the system of people's congress based on the principle of unified power in which the National People's Congress (NPC) functions as the only branch of government and as the highest state organ of power. The presidency is a state organ of the NPC and equivalent to, for instance, the State Council and the National Supervisory Commission, rather than a political office, unlike the premier of the State Council. Together with the NPC Standing Committee, the presidency performs certain functions performed by a head of state in most other countries. The president can engage in state affairs with the consent of the NPC Standing Committee. While the presidency is not a powerful organ in itself, since 27 March 1993, the president has concurrently served as general secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), making the incumbent China's paramount leader and supreme commander of the armed forces.

The 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was convened from September 1–11, 1982. The path of modernization through socialism was laid out. 1,600 delegates and 160 alternate delegates represented the party's 39.65 million members. It was preceded by the 11th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, and succeeded by the 13th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. It coincided with the time in which leader Deng Xiaoping was Chairman of the Central Advisory Commission.

Jiang Zemin (17 August 1926 – 30 November 2022) was a Chinese politician who served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1989 to 2002, as the chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1989 to 2004, and as the president of China from 1993 to 2003. Jiang was the fourth paramount leader of China from 1989 to 2002. He was the core leader of the third generation of Chinese leadership, one of four core leaders alongside Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping.

Born in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, Jiang grew up during the years of Japanese occupation. He studied electrical engineering at the National Central University, later transferring to the National Chiao Tung University; he joined the CCP while he was in college, and graduated in 1947. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he received training at the Stalin Automobile Works in Moscow in the 1950s, later returning to Shanghai in 1962 to serve in various institutes, later being sent between 1970 and 1972 to Romania as part of an expert team to establish machinery manufacturing plants in the country. After 1979, he was appointed as the vice chair of two commissions by vice premier Gu Mu to oversee the newly established special economic zones (SEZs). He became the vice minister of the newly established Ministry of Electronics Industry and a member of the CCP Central Committee in 1982. Jiang was appointed as the mayor of Shanghai in 1985, later being promoted to its Communist Party secretary, as well as a member of the CCP Politburo, in 1987.

Hu Jintao (born 21 December 1942) is a Chinese politician who served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 2002 to 2012, president of China from 2003 to 2013, and chairman of the Central Military Commission from 2004 to 2012. He was a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body, from 1992 to 2012, and served as the paramount leader of China from 2002 to 2012.

Born in Tai County, Jiangsu, Hu studied engineering at Tsinghua University, joining the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while in college. First working as a political counselor at Tsinghua, Hu later worked as an engineer in Gansu, later joining the province's Construction Department. He assumed leadership of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) branch in Gansu, afterwards joining the CYLC leadership in Beijing, eventually becoming the first secretary of the CYLC. Hu was later appointed as Party Committee secretary for Guizhou province and the Tibet Autonomous Region, where his harsh repression of dissent gained him attention from the highest levels. He moved up to serve as a member of the CCP Central Secretariat and vice president under CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin, becoming Jiang Zemin's presumed successor as paramount leader

The succession of power in China since 1949 takes place in the context of a one-party state under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Despite the guarantee of universal franchise in the constitution, the appointment of the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (paramount leader) lies largely in the hands of his predecessor and the powerful factions that control the Central Committee of the CCP.

The appointment of the top leader occurred after two five year terms in accordance with the Constitution of the People's Republic of China from 1982 to 2018. This was changed to unlimited terms during the first plenary session of the 13th National People's Congress in March 2018.