maybe Lonesage can give us some insight from being on the ground there.
"The common people pray for rain, health and a summer that never ends. They don't care what games the high Lords play."
As long as Chinese people bought a home (apartment), a car and have enough money they seriously don't care about anything else. They don't give a shit about anything that isn't their family or money, I really can't stress that enough. They don't care about politics. The economy is great here, lots of people going from nothing to BMWs in a few short years. As long as they've got money they don't give a fuck that Xi's in charge indefinitely.
That said, I saw this coming a mile away, and even joked about it last year with some Chinese people who said that would never happen (I would have rather been wrong). China has multiple factions within the Communist party. Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping are from one faction and Jiang Zemin (the president before both of them) was from the other faction. Over the past 3 or 4 years nearly everyone from Jiang's faction in even the slightest position of power has been either dismissed from the party or jailed for "corruption" or murder in the case of Bo Xilai. I put corruption in quotes because 100% of Chinese politicians are corrupt. It is required, to advance you have to bribe your way up so the only way is to take larger bribes from people below you, it is a trickle up bribery system in China. So the only people actually being arrested are those who are against Xi or low level people that they want to make an example of. To understand how corrupt the system is just look at Wen Jiabao, the premier under Hu Jintao. His entire family were peasant farmers when he was born, nearly every one in his family is a multi millionaire now. These farmers didn't suddenly all become business savvy, they got massive kick backs from people trying to get close to government leaders.
I'm ranting now but after putting away everyone in his purge, there is no one to oppose Xi, this is how he got approval to become president-for-life. He IS the senate, no one has grabbed and consolidated power like this since Mao himself.
Anyways, Xi is overwhelmingly popular. People are stupid enough to believe his anti-corruption campaign was legit and in the interest of the common people and not himself. I mean, hell, Chinese people love Mao and refer to him as Grandpa Mao commonly now. If Xi is the new Mao then I reckon most do not care that he's practically a dictator now.
tl;dr
Chinese people seriously do not give a fuck, and it's something they know they can't do shit about but life for the common Chinese is the best it's ever been so why change it?