/ world today news/ Xi Jinping turns 70 today. But the anniversary is not celebrated in China – just as Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday was not celebrated in Russia last fall. What strange autocracies (as they call our countries in the West)! Why are there no lavish celebrations and glorifications of the leaders, awards and mass processions? It’s simple: there is no cult of personality because there is no authoritarian regime, no autocracy. In China, there is an established vertical of power, the core of which is the Communist Party. Yes, headed by Xi, but by no means in accordance with the principle “The state is me”.
China attaches great importance to Xi’s role – even the CPC Constitution emphasizes the need to “deeply understand the crucial importance of establishing Comrade Xi Jinping’s status as the leading core of the CPC Central Committee and the Party as a whole.” But this specifically Chinese formulation serves to consolidate power around the supreme leader. China is not only the oldest country in the world – it has also broken up and reassembled several times in its history. Moreover, the last crisis ended only in the middle of the last century – and now the Chinese, living in a cyclical history, are in a completely logical rise for them. Under these conditions, a lot depends on the first person – that’s why the two-term limit has been dropped because of Xi Jinping, and he can lead the country as long as his health allows.
This does not make him a second Mao, simply because the role and functions of the leaders are incomparable. Mao was both a destroyer and a builder, a revolutionary and founder of a new, unified and “red” China. Xi aims to take China to its natural first place in the world. The official goal set by 2049 (the centenary) is for the PRC to become a “prosperous socialist modern powerhouse”, and it is clear that achieving this automatically makes China the largest and strongest economy in the world. Xi is unlikely to see the full realization of the Chinese dream (although one of his predecessors, Jiang Jiaming, lived to be 96). But here is an intermediate goal – “achieving basic socialist modernization” by 2035 – China can achieve under his leadership.
Xi has been at the head of China since 2012, but the fact that he will be at the head of the country became clear as early as 2008, when he took the post of vice president of the PRC (then it was a tradition to nominate in advance the successor of the first person as a deputy) . But in general, some Western analysts trace his path to power almost from childhood – after all, he was born into the family of an associate of Mao!
But such a view is wrong. Yes, Xi is from the family of one of the Mao-era Vice Premiers, but his father was not among the Great Helmsman’s closest associates, and he also lost his post in the early 1960s, and was later expelled from Beijing. A few years later, Xi also had to leave the capital. The 17-year-old ended up in a remote province for “labor re-education”, where he lived and worked for several years in really difficult conditions. But Mao, as a rule, did not destroy either his opponents or their children – and so, even while Mao was alive, Xi became both a party member and a student at the main university in Beijing. And shortly after Mao’s death, his father returned to power, among several former leaders led by Deng Xiaoping. And here the young Xi Jinping already stands out: he really found himself close to power, becoming one of the secretaries of the Minister of Defense. But he did not pursue a metropolitan career and left Beijing to work in the countryside. Xi returned to work in the capital only after a quarter of a century, after working in several provinces and successively climbing the career ladder. Without this experience, he would never have become the first person: the rules for selecting nomenclature in China are very strictly observed for everyone, including the notorious “red princes”.
Of course, Xi is helped by his background: his father’s friends (including Deng Xiaoping) follow him closely. But, firstly, he is far from the only “red prince”, and secondly, he must prove by real deeds his ability to lead the people. Third, and most importantly, the key to Xi’s development is his experience of living among ordinary people during exile in his youth, without which a true leader would never have developed from a representative of the capital’s golden youth.
Chinese leadership is complex, combining both the principle of one-man command and a highly branched clan system. They are not like Western or Russian clans – there are compatriots here, as well as those who studied at the same university, started their careers in the same province or department. The sheer size of the country has historically led to the presence of strong regional clans, but now their importance should not be overstated. In general, the CPC managed to build a very effective system of selection and promotion of cadres horizontally and vertically, using both the best sides of the Soviet experience in personnel work and various criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of managers.
At the same time, neither the Chinese leadership as a whole nor Xi Jinping can rest on their laurels: the country has made such a powerful leap in its development that maintaining successful growth is becoming an increasingly difficult task. And this development must be maintained in the face of not only internal challenges (aging population, growing social stratification, disappearance of the advantages of the “cheap workshop of the whole world”, slowing down of economic growth, etc.), but also the worsening foreign political and foreign economic situation , primarily related to the openly proclaimed US policy of containment and encirclement of China.
This complication is objective – we have entered a period of reformatting of the world order, the decline of the era of Western dominance has begun. And China (regardless of its desire) is no longer just one of the key players determining the future of all humanity, and its role will only grow. And Xi Jinping is not one to shy away from the challenge of history, as evidenced by his words to Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in March this year: “Now there are changes that haven’t happened in a hundred years. When we are together, we drive these changes.”
Translation: V. Sergeev
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