China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping received his third term as president on Friday. He is one of the most powerful in the world – but the person Xi is a mystery.
Beijing/Munich – China’s strong man will continue to be Xi Jinping in the future. As expected, the National People’s Congress unanimously appointed Xi to a historic third term as president. The 69-year-old has reached his goal. As early as 2018, he had the constitution changed specifically for this third term. And as early as October 2022, he was confirmed as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the third time at the party congress.
Many now see Xi Jinping as the most powerful man in the world. As a state, China is still number two behind the USA. But Xi has an abundance of power that his US counterpart Joe Biden is far from able to match. While Biden is currently having to deal with a congress that is partly dominated by opposition Republicans, the People’s Congress in China dutifully nods to all drafts and personal details.
But who is Xi Jinping? As a person, he remains enigmatic. “Xi himself seems to represent power in itself. It radiates from him, almost like a physical force,” writes Kerry Brown in his new book Xi Jinping. A study of Power, one of the few books about Xi. He talks like a man of infinite confidence, said Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London and a recognized Xi expert.
Xi Jinping: The power politician
Xi Jinping has been Secretary General of the Communist Party, President of the country and Chief of the Armed Forces for a good ten years now. So were his predecessors. But Xi is different. He brushed aside internal competitors, partly as part of his campaign against endemic corruption, which he launched immediately after taking office. He rules the party through a network of commissions – most of which he chairs himself and which control the state apparatus. This structure, which is impenetrable to outsiders, is said to result in efficiency gains in some concrete policy issues. Most importantly, it cements Xi’s control over many policy areas. “The evidence of his need for control is pervasive and sometimes shockingly detailed,” Brown said.
“Xi is radically different from his predecessors in terms of his assertiveness,” said former Australian Prime Minister and his country’s future Ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, at the launch of his book the Avoidable War on the US-China conflict. The predecessors Jiang Zemin or Hu Jintao were always part of a leadership collective. Xi, however, claims leadership for himself, just like China’s revolutionary leader Mao Zedong once did.
How Xi Jinping climbed the corporate ladder
But how did Xi Jinping come to power there? Other than his opinions and thoughts, the cornerstones of his life are known. His father Xi Zhongxun was one of the first revolutionaries. He rose to prominence in Mao’s China – and fell from grace in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, was tortured and imprisoned. Xi Jinping’s sister took her own life at the time. He himself was sent to the countryside in 1969 at the age of 15, like many young people at the time. They were supposed to learn to work with their hands – and usually did so under the poorest of circumstances. For seven years he lived in the northwestern village of Liangjiahe, partly in a cave dwelling, the traditional dwelling of humble farmers in the region. But instead of hating the communists, the young Xi kept applying to join the party. Until it worked.
How much the horror of those years shaped him is unknown. In any case, Xi Jinping began his party career in the countryside, in 1974 as a functionary in Liangjiahe. From 1975 to 1979 he studied chemical engineering at the renowned Beijing Tsinghua University. During this time, the older Xi was rehabilitated: Xi Zhongxun built China’s first special economic zone Shenzhen on behalf of reformer Deng Xiaoping, which experimented with foreign trade and international investments and has now risen to become a high-tech metropolis. Xi Jr. has also been on the up through various posts along the now booming East Coast.
Xi Jinping: No inevitable rise to power
But why him? “There was no inevitability for his rise to power,” writes Kerry Brown of Xi. “But there must have been something in the party’s opaque machinery, behind the facade, that set him apart from the many other competitors in the highly competitive and ruthless world of the Chinese political elite.” In the 1990s, Xi largely kept a low profile and was considered cautious and controlled. The real rise began in 1999: governor of Fujian province, party leader of the neighboring province of Zhejiang, which is known for its successful private sector, and finally party leader of Shanghai in 2007 (the party leaders in China always rank above the governors).
It was only at this time that it became clear that Xi Jinping was also eligible for even higher ordinations. The processes that led to the 59-year-old Xi as the future boss before the 2012 CP party congress are still “shrouded in mystery,” writes Brown.
In 2012, Xi became party leader for the first time – and immediately began to expand his power base. He quickly pushed aside the unloved Prime Minister Li Keqiang – a protégé of his predecessor, who was probably always a touch too liberal for Xi – and took care of his portfolio, the economy. At the party congress in October 2022, he urged Li Keqiang to retire. Since then, only politicians who are loyal to Xi have sat on the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the CP, China’s power center. One of them, Li Qiang, is expected to become the new prime minister on Saturday.
Xi’s politics: security, control and conflict with the US
Policies pushed by Xi include relatively successful poverty reduction, a tough anti-corruption campaign, more control over provinces, corporations and society, the disturbing re-education camps for Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang — and the zero-Covid policy, which was only abolished in December. He shows himself more red than pragmatic. “Ideology trumps economy” was the title of the EU Chamber of Commerce in Beijing in 2022 in its position paper on the situation. His crackdown on free speech, the containment of entrepreneurship and the zero-Covid policy threaten to choke off growth. His goal is the “great rejuvenation” of China by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic. Then China should be a world power, on an equal footing with the USA.
Competition and conflict with the US seem to increasingly dominate China under Xi. “Western countries, led by the United States, have engaged in comprehensive containment and suppression of China, which has posed unprecedented challenges for the country’s development,” Xi Jinping said at the People’s Congress. He has US support for Taiwan in mind as well as the US export ban on state-of-the-art microchips to China and the blockade of several of his country’s tech companies in the US. The dispute was initiated by ex-US President Donald Trump, who started the trade war with China. The obsession with the US conflict is now said to be the driving force behind China’s “boundless friendship” with Russia.
But no one knows what Xi is really thinking. He never gives interviews and, like all Chinese Communist Party grandees, lives in the Zhongnanhai gated complex next to the old Imperial Palace in the heart of Beijing. And this will continue until at least 2028.
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