Who is China's
President Xi Jinping?
Issued on: 21/10/2022 -
23:04Modified: 21/10/2022 - 23:02
When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, some observers
predicted he would be the most liberal Communist Party leader in China's
history, based on his low-key profile, family backstory and perhaps a degree of
misguided hope.
Ten years later, those forecasts lie in
tatters, proving only how little was understood of the man who looks set to
become China's most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong after the five-yearly
Communist Party Congress ends on Saturday.
Xi has shown himself to be ruthless in
his ambition, intolerant of dissent, with a desire for control that has
infiltrated almost every aspect of life in modern China.
He has gone from being primarily known
as the husband of a celebrity singer to someone whose apparent charisma and
aptitude for political storytelling have created a personality cult not seen
since Mao's day.
The colourful details of his early life
have been rinsed and repackaged in official party lore, but the man himself --
and what drives him -- remain somewhat more of an enigma.
"I dispute the conventional view
that Xi Jinping struggles for power for power's sake," Alfred L. Chan,
author of a book on Xi's life, told AFP.
"I would suggest that he strives
for power as an instrument... to fulfil his vision."
Another biographer, Adrian Geiges, told
AFP that he did not think Xi was motivated by a desire for personal enrichment,
despite international media investigations having revealed his family's amassed
wealth.
"That's not his interest,"
Geiges said.
"He really has a vision about
China, he wants to see China as the most powerful country in the world."
Central to that vision -- what Xi calls
the "Chinese Dream" or "great rejuvenation of the Chinese
nation" -- is the role of the Communist Party (CCP).
"Xi is a man of faith... for him,
God is the Communist Party," wrote Kerry Brown, author of "Xi: A
Study in Power".
"The greatest mistake the rest of
the world makes about Xi is to not take this faith seriously."
Xi might not seem an obvious candidate
to become a CCP diehard, though he grew up as a "princeling", or
member of the party elite.
His father Xi Zhongxun was a
revolutionary hero turned vice premier, whose "strictness toward his
family members was so serious that even those close to him believed it bordered
on the inhuman", according to the elder Xi's biographer Joseph Torigian.
But when Zhongxun was purged by Mao and
targeted during the Cultural Revolution, "(Jinping) and his family were
traumatised", said Chan.
His status vanished overnight, and the
family was split up. One of his half-sisters is reported to have killed herself
because of the persecution.
Xi has said he was ostracised by his
classmates, an experience the political scientist David Shambaugh suggests
contributed to a "sense of emotional and psychological detachment and his
autonomy from a very young age".
At just 15, Xi was ordered to the
countryside in central China where he spent years hauling grain and sleeping in
cave homes.
"The intensity of the labour
shocked me," he later said.
He also had to take part in
"struggle sessions" in which he had to denounce his father.
"Even if you don't understand, you
are forced to understand," he said, describing the sessions to a Washington
Post reporter "with a trace of bitterness" in a 1992 interview.
"It makes you mature
earlier."
Biographer Chan said the experiences of
his youth had given him "toughness".
"He tends to go for broke. He
tends to use a two-fisted approach when he approaches problems. But he also has
a certain appreciation of the arbitrariness of power and that's why he also
emphasises law-based governance."
Nowadays, the cave Xi slept in is a
domestic tourist draw, used to emphasise traits such as his concern for China's
poorest.
When AFP visited in 2016, one local
painted a picture of an almost legendary figure, reading books between breaks
in hard labour "so one could see he was no common man".
Chinese
President Xi Jinping's apparent charisma and aptitude for political
storytelling have created a personality cult not seen since the days of Mao
Zedong Saeed
KHAN AFP/File
That does not seem to have been obvious
at the time though. Xi himself said he was not even rated "as high as the
women" when he first arrived.
His application for CCP membership was
rejected multiple times because of the family stigma, before it was finally
accepted.
Beginning as a village party boss in
1974, Xi climbed to the governorship of coastal Fujian province in 1999, then
party chief of Zhejiang province in 2002 and eventually Shanghai in 2007.
"He was working very
systematically... to get experience by starting at a very low level, in a
village, then in a prefecture... and so on," said biographer Geiges.
"And he was very clever by keeping
a low profile."
Xi's father was rehabilitated in the
late 1970s following the death of Mao, massively boosting his son's standing.
Following a divorce from his first
wife, Xi married superstar soprano Peng Liyuan in 1987, at a time when she was
much better known than him.
Even so, his potential was not apparent
to all, exemplified by comments made by his host on a trip to the United States
in 1985.
"No one in their right mind would
ever think that that guy who stayed in my house would become the
president," Eleanor Dvorchak was quoted as saying years later in the New
Yorker magazine.
Cai Xia, a former high-ranking CCP
cadre who now lives in exile in the United States, believes Xi "suffers
from an inferiority complex, knowing that he is poorly educated in comparison
with other top CCP leaders".
As a result, he is "thin-skinned,
stubborn, and dictatorial", she wrote in a recent article in Foreign
Affairs.
'Heir of
the revolution'
But Xi has always regarded himself
"as an heir of the revolution", said Chan.
In 2007, he was appointed to the
Politburo Standing Committee, the party's highest decision-making body.
When he replaced Hu Jintao five years
later, there was little in Xi's past administrative record that foreshadowed
his actions once installed as leader.
He has cracked down on civil society
movements, independent media and academic freedoms, overseen alleged human
rights abuses in the northwest Xinjiang region, and promoted a far more
aggressive foreign policy than his predecessor.
In the absence of access to either Xi
or any of his inner circle, scholars are left to survey his earlier writings
and speeches for clues to his motivations.
"The absolute centrality of the
party's mission to make China a great country again is evident from Xi's
earliest recorded statements," wrote Brown.
Xi has harnessed that narrative of an
ascendant China to great effect, using nationalism as a tool for his own and
the party's legitimacy among the population.
But there is also evidence he fears
that grasp on power might decline.
"The fall of the Soviet Union and
of socialism in eastern Europe was a big shock," said Geiges, adding Xi
blames the collapse on its political opening up.
"So he decided that something like
this shall not happen to China... that's why he wants strong leadership of the
Communist Party, with one strong leader." https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221021-who-is-china-s-president-xi-jinping
