The contradictions of Xi Jinping
Two incisive studies of the Chinese president reveal a complex figure who is all too aware of the capricious nature of power
Chinese President Xi Jinping visits a vegetable farm in Xianning © Xinhua News Agency/Eyevine
Of
all the relationships Donald Trump will have to manage as US president,
none may be more consequential than that with Xi Jinping. As prep, the
next occupant of the White House could do worse than read two incisive
new books on the man who wants to make China great again.
During
his election campaign, Trump — who is set to be inaugurated on January
20 — had a fair amount to say about Xi. He boasted that Xi respects him
because “I’m fucking crazy”. After he was shot at an election rally in
July, he said that Xi “wrote me a beautiful note”. On a separate
occasion, he called Xi “fierce” and “very smart”.
There
is, however, a lot more to be learned about Xi, the only world leader
whose power could be said to rival that of the US president. The
impression that emerges from these two deeply researched books is of a
surprisingly complex, multi-layered personality. Xi is a strongman who
nevertheless suffered deep childhood trauma. He is a pragmatist who yet
retains respect for ideology. Both he and his father were cruelly
persecuted by communist authorities but he remains a party loyalist.
The early part of The Red Emperor
by Michael Sheridan has even a reader unschooled in psychoanalysis
wondering about the sort of life-long imprint that trauma can inflict.
During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), a teenage Xi went through more
than a dozen “struggle sessions”, which were violent public
humiliations of people held to be “class enemies”. At some points he was
also incarcerated, hungry and infested with fleas.
“One
night a desperate Xi [escaped],” Sheridan writes. “He ran through the
rainswept alleys of Beijing to his home. He banged on the door, hoping
to get food and dry clothes. But his mother was so terrified for her own
safety — and that of Jinping’s siblings — that she not only turned him
away but reported his flight to the authorities.”
His
mother did not act out of callousness, Sheridan explains. “These were
the actions of an insider. Knowing that her house was watched, she also
knew that punishment for helping her son would be certain. He fled into
the rain, crying.”
This
episode is one of several ordeals recounted in Sheridan’s excellent
work, the most vivid and compelling biography of Xi published to date. A
veteran journalist with extensive experience in Hong Kong and China,
Sheridan acknowledges his debt to Howard Zhang, a former head of the BBC
News Chinese Service, who acted as lead researcher on Chinese sources
for the book.
While
Sheridan’s book recounts the seminal chapters in Xi’s life and career,
Kevin Rudd traces the transformation in China’s ideological worldview
since he came to power in 2012. These shifts have turned much of Chinese
politics, economics and foreign policy on its head, says Rudd in On Xi Jinping.
In
a nutshell, Xi’s ideological beliefs could be described as “Marxist
Nationalism”, argues Rudd, a former Australian prime minister, the
current Australian ambassador to the US and a long-standing China
expert.
In
detail this means three big things. Xi has taken Chinese politics to
the “Leninist left” by stressing centralisation in decision making. He
has taken economics to the “Marxist left”, emphasising the role of
state-owned enterprises and regulation. Lastly, foreign policy under Xi
has moved to the “nationalist right”, making Beijing more
confrontational and assertive.
But
what experiences have moulded Xi’s cast of mind? Sheridan devotes
attention to his father, Xi Zhongxun. The elder Xi had been an associate
of Chairman Mao Zedong and rose to the rank of vice-premier before he
was purged in 1962. He was jailed, forced to perform self-criticism and
assigned work in a tractor factory. All told, he spent 16 years in the
political wilderness.
Following
his father’s ostracism, Xi found himself banished to an impoverished
village in the countryside for seven years of hard labour alongside
peasant farmers.
This
meant that by the time he reached the age of 21, Xi had known great
privilege as the “princeling” son of a senior official. He had also
tasted public humiliation, persecution and years of poverty in rural
exile, estranged from parental love. When his father finally won
political rehabilitation in 1978, Xi was re-embraced by the party that
had shunned him.
Xi Jinping, aged five, with his father Xi Zhongxun and younger brother Xi
Yuanping in 1958 . . .
Sheridan wisely avoids the diagnoses of cod psychology. But the rest of The Red Emperor
leaves no doubt that Xi is a leader obsessed by both the capricious
nature of power and the insurance it affords those who control it.
The
most dramatic chapter concerns Xi’s purge in 2014 of Zhou Yongkang, the
highest ranking official to be brought down by a corruption case since
the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. As the man in charge of
China’s sprawling security agency, Zhou was a member of the politburo,
the pinnacle of Chinese power.
After
his downfall, an official newspaper described Zhou, at the age of 71,
as a “crazy erotomaniac” with a string of mistresses who once had sex in
an underground parking lot with an “exceptionally beautiful” TV
presenter. But such prurience deflected from more systemic questions:
how could the Chinese Communist party harbour a man at its highest
echelon who was so grotesquely corrupt?
When
Zhou was sentenced to life in prison, details of his affairs emerged.
Assets worth more than $10bn were seized from his estate, including 300
apartments and houses, 60 cars, hoards of gold, vintage alcohol, silver,
jewellery, antiques, paintings and wads of cash in foreign
currency. Zhou’s case stunned China and showed that Xi was not a leader
to be underestimated.
Rudd’s
book adds a wealth of context to what animates Xi’s grim determination.
The former Australian PM is one of the few westerners to have met him
on a number of occasions. A fluent Chinese speaker who worked at
Australia’s embassy in Beijing, Rudd completed a DPhil on Xi Jinping’s
ideological worldview in 2022 at the University of Oxford.
According
to his analysis, one of Xi’s formative experiences was the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991, a historical moment that resounded through the
corridors of power in Beijing as a tragedy (a view incidentally shared
by Vladimir Putin). To Xi’s mind, the reasons why China’s huge communist
neighbour foundered had a lot to do with lapses in the respect it
accorded Marxist ideology.
“An
important reason was that the struggle in the field of ideology was
extremely intense, completely negating the history of the Soviet Union,
negating the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
negating Lenin, negating Stalin, creating historical nihilism and
confused thinking,” according to official Chinese documents attributed
to Xi.
“This is a cautionary tale!” Xi adds.
Thus,
a mini vogue among Sinologists in recent years to characterise Xi as a
transactional pragmatist with few (if any) ideological convictions is
erroneous, Rudd’s book makes clear. This should be a useful insight for
the new US administration to bear in mind.
“Marxist
nationalism”, as Rudd styles it, is set to be the animating philosophy
of Xi’s remaining time in office. But what is this likely to mean, in
practical terms?
The
answer is that Xi sees himself as on a historical mission to create a
“new era” of Chinese pre-eminence. He will use his all-powerful Leninist
party to reinforce his purpose. If he encounters resistance at home or
abroad, “relentless struggle” will be deployed to overcome it. Trump’s
new team has been warned.
On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism Is Shaping China and the World by Kevin Rudd, OUP £26.99/ $34.99, 624 pages
The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His New China by Michael Sheridan, Headline Press £25, 368 pages