Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping takes the oath after being re-elected as president for a third term during the third plenary session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 10, 2023. (AFP via Getty Images/NOEL CELIS)
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Xi Jinping has reaffirmed his position as China’s number one. This 69-year-old man officially returned to office as president for the third time on Friday (10/3/2023).
Currently, Xi is the most powerful ruler in China since Mao Zedong. It has even shown itself to be ‘ruthless’ in ambition, intolerant of dissent, and in control of almost every aspect of life in modern China.
Xi has gone from being known as the husband of a celebrity singer to someone with the charisma and political flair that created a cult of invisible personality since Mao’s time.
Alfred L. Chan, author of a book on Xi’s life, said the Chinese president was not fighting for power. “I would suggest that he strives for power as an instrument… to fulfill his vision,” he was quoted as saying AFP.
Another author, Adrian Geiges, said Xi was not motivated by a desire to enrich himself, despite international media investigations revealing his family’s fantastic fortune.
“That’s not in his interest,” Geiges said. “He really has a vision of China, he wants to see China as the most powerful country in the world.”
A Traumatized ‘Prince’
Xi grew up as a ‘prince’, a member of the party’s elite. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revolutionary hero-turned-vice prime minister.
However, when Xi Zhongxun was purged by Mao and targeted during the Cultural Revolution, Xi Jinping and his family are said to have been traumatized.
His status vanished overnight, and his family split. One of his half-siblings reportedly committed suicide due to the abuse.
Xi said he was ostracized by his classmates. It’s an experience that political scientist David Shambaugh says contributed to his sense of emotional and psychological separateness and autonomy from a very young age.
At the age of 15, Xi was ordered to the countryside in central China where he spent years hauling grain and sleeping in cave houses. But Chan’s biographer says Xi’s youthful experiences have given him resilience.
systematic & Low Profile
Xi said he wasn’t even rated “as high as a woman” when he first arrived in the countryside. His application to become a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was rejected many times due to family stigma, before finally being accepted.
Starting as a village party boss in 1974, Xi rose to the governorship of the coastal province of Fujian in 1999. He later became party chairman of Zhejiang province in 2002 and finally Shanghai in 2007.
“He worked very systematically…to gain experience by starting at a very low level, in villages, then in prefectures…and so on,” says biographer Geiges. “And he’s very good at keeping a low profile.”
Xi’s father was rehabilitated in the late 1970s after Mao’s death, greatly enhancing his son’s status.
Following a divorce from his first wife, the rising star Xi married superstar soprano Peng Liyuan in 1987.
Even so, his potential was not seen by everyone, as his host revealed on a trip to the United States in 1985.
Cai Xia, a former high-ranking CCP cadre now living in exile in the United States, believes Xi suffers from an inferiority complex, knowing that he is poorly educated compared to other top CCP leaders.
“As a result, he is stubborn and dictatorial,” he wrote last year in Foreign Affairs.
Heir of the Revolution
Even so, Xi has always seen himself as the heir to the revolution, Chan said. In 2007, he was appointed to the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the party’s highest decision-making body.
When he succeeded Hu Jintao five years later, there were few administrative records of Xi’s past describing his actions after being installed as leader.
He has cracked down on civil society movements, independent media and academic freedom, overseen alleged human rights abuses in the northwestern Xinjiang region, and promoted a far more aggressive foreign policy than his predecessors.
Xi has tapped into the narrative of China in power to great effect, using nationalism as a tool for himself and the party’s legitimacy among the population. But there was also evidence that he was worried that this hold on power would decline.
“The fall of the Soviet Union and socialism in eastern Europe was a big shock,” said Geiges, adding Xi blamed the collapse on his political openness.
“So he decided that something like this would not happen in China… that’s why he wanted a strong leadership from the Communist Party, with one strong leader.”
(luc/luc)
