NewsTracker Answers for week of Mar. 05, 2018

Q: China’s legislature meets this week and was expected to approve a constitutional amendment ending a two-term limit on President Xi Jinping, raising concerns about a return to the one-man rule of past dictators. Where is China?

Circle the area on this map


Q: Abolishing term limits means Xi, 64, could be continually reelected and rule China until he dies – a de facto president for life. Where else has a leader been reelected president multiple times until he died?

A. Cuba

B. Romania

C. United States

D. All of the above


D. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office in 1945 after winning popular election four times. The United States later adopted a constitutional amendment to limit presidents to two terms. Their nations’ ruling Communist parties elected Fidel Castro in Cuba and Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania many times before the leaders’ deaths.


Q: China also is run by a Communist Party which chooses the nation’s rulers. Who was the first Communist leader to rule China?

A. Chiang Kai-Shek

B. Deng Xiaoping 

C. Mao Zedong

D. Sun Yat-Sen


C. Mao Zedong defeated nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949, established China’s Communist government and ruled the nation with an iron fist until his death in 1976. He was succeeded by Deng Xiaoping who instituted sweeping economic reforms and established the nation’s limit of two, five-year presidential terms that Xi is now ending.


Q: Deng’s economic reforms unleashed explosive growth in China. Which is the world’s largest economy?

A. China

B. European Union

C. United States


A. According to the CIA World Factbook, China surpassed the United States in 2016 to become the world’s largest economy with largest gross domestic product, followed by the European Union and then the United States. China now has more billionaires than any other country – many of them in the legislature voting this week on abolishing the presidential term limit.


Q: President Xi rules the world’s most populous nation. China’s geographic area is about the same size as which nation?

A. Australia

B. Canada

C. Russia

D. United States


D. The United States is about 3.79 million square miles compared with about 3.70 million square miles for China, according to the CIA World Factbook. China has 1.379 billion people, more than a billion more people than the 326 million population of the United States.