Chinese state media blacks out CNN signal when reporter starts to talk about extending President Xi's term

Report about Chinese leader Xi Jinping's plans to extend presidential terms blocked

A news report about Chinese leader Xi Jinping abolishing presidential term limits was blacked out when it aired in the country.

Will Ripley, CNN's international correspondent, was reporting on responses to the leader's plans which could see him stay in power for life under his new ideological guidelines, known as "Xi Jinping Thought".

But mid-report he broke off and told viewers that he was being “blacked out right now”. A shot of a blank TV screen was shown alongside the broadcast.

The report began with a clip of US President Donald Trump joking about being ”president for life”, following Mr Jinping’s announcement which opened up the path for him to lead indefinitely after his second term comes to an end later this year.

The US President said: “Don’t forget China’s great and Xi is a great gentleman. He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”

The programme then cuts across to Mr Ripley in China, who said while there was no official response from the Chinese government on Mr Trump’s comments, they are likely to be “encouraging for the communist party”.

Describing it as a “heavy-handed authoritarian country” he said no one would protest the controversial decision because they were “brutally” cracked down on.

"Even our own CNN feed here in China was blacked out earlier when I was reporting on CNN International by the Chinese censors," he said.

“In fact, I am looking and I am blacked out right now as a result of our reporting about this.

“State media is censored; the social media is censored as well. People who post anything that is critical of Chinese government or critical of the abolition of term limits, they are not able to post words such as ‘disagree’ or ‘emperor’, alluding to the fact Xi Jinping could be China’s next emperor.”

He added that the comments would be “greatly discouraging for the many people in China who had hoped Xi Jinping would solidify the process of the peaceful transfer of power at the end of his second term.

Instead he said he was poised to grab the power for himself, potentially rule as president for life.”

The report comes after a recent announcement by China’s state media outlet Xinhua which said: “The Communist Party of China Central Committee proposed to remove the expression that the President and Vice-President of the People’s Republic of China ‘shall serve no more than two consecutive terms’ from the country’s Constitution.”

The decision is expected to be waved through by the country’s parliament, the National People’s Congress.

Backlash to the decision was cracked down upon by the state through further online censorship.

A number of terms were banned – some temporarily – from being posted on popular Chinese social media site Weibo.

Loosely translated, these included words and phrases such as "disagree", "I oppose", "ascend the throne", and various references to an "emperor", according to the China Digital Times, which also reported that mentioning George Orwell novels 1984 and Animal Farm had also been barred.

References to Winnie the Pooh and Disney were also blocked, as these were part of a long-running joke that compared the leader to the fictional bear.

The letter N was also banned for some time, understood to be referring “to n terms in office”.