(Bloomberg) -- President Xi Jinping has accumulated so many titles he’s been called the Chairman of Everything. But one gaining traction among Communist Party elites is raising concerns of a Mao Zedong-style personality cult.

Lingxiu, or “leader,” is a revered title of praise previously reserved for Mao, the founder of the People’s Republic, who was referred to as “the great leader” when the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. While party officials and state media have occasionally bestowed the title on Xi in the past few years -- in the form of renmin lingxiu, or “people’s leader” -- this week has seen more cadres using the term, including at least two Politburo members. 

Beijing party chief Cai Qi, a close ally of Xi, said Sunday afternoon that the past decade has proven the Chinese president is the “people’s leader who has heartfelt love from us.” Wang Chen, a senior lawmaker, also used the phrase to extol Xi during a discussion of the Hubei province delegation on Monday morning.

“General Secretary Xi Jinping is the outstanding figure of our great era, the people’s leader that all people look up to,” Tian Peiyan, deputy head of the Central Committee’s Policy Research Office, told a press briefing Monday on the sidelines of the party congress, at which Xi is expected to secure a third term in office.

The references are the latest sign Xi is set to further consolidate even more unofficial authority within the party, which has already conferred such names as the “core” on the Chinese leader. At the same time, it risks stoking a backlash among those who see Xi amassing too much power in a party that embraced collective leadership after Mao’s turbulent rule ended with his death in 1976.

Last year, the party’s Central Committee vowed that upholding the current leadership “in no way involves the creation of any kind of personality cult -- something the CPC has resolutely opposed.” Those concerns were evident in a banner draped from a bridge by a lone protester in Beijing last week that read: “We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution. We want to vote, not have a lingxiu.” 

Reviving the lingxiu title was risky because of existing “resentments against the Maoism of Xi Jinping,” Perry Link, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who helped edit the Tiananmen Papers, a collection of secret documents related to the 1989 military crackdown on protesters in Beijing. Elements of Xi’s Covid Zero policy have drawn comparisons with the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political and social chaos driven by Mao’s desire for complete control.

“The Beijing protest suggests people think Xi is trying to be Mao,” Link said. “And they’re saying, ‘We don’t need another Mao.’”

Xi has sporadically been referred to as “people’s leader” over the years. At the last party congress in 2017, the official Xinhua News Agency called him “core of the party,” “military chief,” and “people’s leader” in a documentary. 

While “people’s leader” is important, it pales in comparison to Xi’s moves to disrupt succession norms and remove term limits, said Neil Thomas, a China analyst at Eurasia Group, the political risk advisory and consulting firm. “That’s the really significant change,” he added.

Still, Chinese history shows that assuming such grandiose titles isn’t without risk. When the Cultural Revolution began, a few party cadres -- including Lin Biao, Mao’s designated successor at the time -- began calling Mao “great teacher, great leader, great commander and great helmsmen.” Party mouthpiece People’s Daily then formally adopted the references, and they began to spread. 

After Mao died, his successor Hua Guofeng was given the title yingming lingxiu, or “wise leader.” But he was later accused of engaging in a personality cult, according to Joseph Torigian, an assistant professor at American University. 

“So Xi’s challenge is how to use such titles to further increase his stature without it backfiring,” Torigian said. 

Xi has portrayed himself as a man of the people. In 2013, his first full year in power, an illiterate villager in China’s central Hunan province welcomed Xi into her home while he was visiting and asked what she should call him. 

“I am a servant of the people,” Xi replied. 

Either way, the title makes clear that Xi is as important as Mao and has surpassed former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, according to Chen Gang, assistant director of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore. 

“That would give him an influence that’s greater than what his actual office holds,” Chen said. “And that could potentially have a big impact for future.” 

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