‘Not My President’ posters pop up in universities around world with Xi set for lifetime rule

So far, the posters have appeared at college campuses in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia

Posters have started popping up in college campuses across the United States proclaiming “Not My President.” Words directed not at Donald Trump, but at Xi Jinping.

The dual posters — in both English and Chinese — are part of a grassroots movement of overseas Chinese who are expressing their discontent with China’s plan to scrap its limit on presidential terms, allowing Xi Jinping to potentially remain leader for life.

“Xi Jinping is abolishing term limits of his presidency through Chinese rubber stamp legislative body. It is time to let him know that WE DISAGREE,” the posters read, carrying the hashtag #IDISAGREE, a slogan that was one of many phrases blocked on Weibo following the proposal’s announcement last week.

The campaign has set up its own Twitter account, which now has more than 500 followers (only about one-third of which are China reporters). The account has poster templates for download and draws attention to each new poster sighting appearing on college campuses in the US:

The movement has also spread to universities in Canada:

In the UK:

And in Australia:

Though the Twitter account has cautioned students against putting these posters up in mainland China.

The students organizing this campaign have chosen to remain anonymous, worried about what sort of consequences would await them back home if the Chinese government discovered their identities.

However, they did exchange messages on Twitter with Foreign Policy’s Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian (who recently published a big piece on China’s influence on American campuses), telling FP that:

“The single most important driving force behind China’s growth in the past 30 years has been the check on the party leader’s power on the institutional level. It’s definitely not our wish that an unelected strongman become a de facto lifetime dictator.”

Term limits on office holders were written into China’s constitution in 1982 while Deng Xiaoping was in power as a reaction to the cult of personality that had developed around Mao Zedong. The campaign’s organizers say they are worried that the abolition of these term limits could “plunge us into another round of the Cultural Revolution.”

Back in China, any online dissent over the proposal has been heavily censored with only a few dissidents choosing to speak out to foreign media. Meanwhile, China’s biggest annual political gathering in Beijing has been filled with glowing praise for Xi Jinping, and NPC delegates appear ready to pass the constitutional amendment with a unanimous vote on Sunday.