China’s Xi Jinping Takes Third Term as President With Eye on U.S.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as his country’s head of state, completing a transition into the second decade of his rule as he seeks to reassert himself as a global statesman and navigate an increasingly fractious rivalry with the U.S.

Mr. Xi is set to become China’s longest serving head of state since the Communist victory in 1949 after the country’s rubber-stamp legislature formally vested him with another five years as president on Friday. His reappointment, approved unanimously by more than 2,900 lawmakers assembled in Beijing, had been considered a formality after the 69-year-old took a norm-breaking third term as Communist Party chief last fall.

Mr. Xi derives most of his powers from his roles as head of the party and the military, but he has used the largely ceremonial presidency to cast himself as China’s face to the world—fronting an assertive foreign policy to pursue what he sees as his nation’s rightful standing as a great power.