China's Xi given 2nd 5-year term as Communist Party leader

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping has been given a second five-year term as leader of the ruling Communist Party.

Xi was returned to the post of secretary general following the inaugural meeting Wednesday of the new Central Committee that was elected at the party's twice-a-decade national congress on Tuesday.

The party congress already elevated Xi's status to China's most powerful ruler in decades by inserting his name and dogma into the party's constitution alongside past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

That sets the stage for the authoritarian leader to tighten his grip over the country while pursuing an increasingly muscular foreign policy and military expansion. It also effectively makes any act of opposing him tantamount to an attack on the party itself.

Xi leads the party's seven-member Politburo Standing Committee.