Book summary: Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping

Summary: Xi Jinping wants to become the world's most powerful leader. To succeed, he must balance Mao's?Little Red Book?with the?Analects?of Confucius, and more. Fran?ois Bougon's compelling biography exposes the historical, philosophical, political and personal narratives that Xi has skilfully woven together to create a superpower in his own image. Is Xi's China a land of 'new market totalitarianism'? Will this be the price of the Chinese dream?

Who is Xi Jinping?

Xi Jinping, who grew up in the Beijing neighbourhoods inhabited by senior officials,

did not seek wealth. It was power that attracted him.

According to the statements of a former acquaintance, gathered by the American Embassy between 2007 and 2009, Xi was always ‘particularly ambitious’ and ‘never lost track of his goal’, which was to reach the highest echelons.

When Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, advocate of ‘Asian values’, met Xi Jinping in 2007, just after the latter’s election to the Politburo, Xi made a strong impression: He has his own mind, he has experienced much, and gone through many a difficult period. He spent seven years in the countryside, then eighteen years in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, before going to Shanghai.

I would put him in Nelson Mandela’s class of people. A person with enormous emotional stability who does not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings to affect his judgment.

Xi's vision

Founded in 1921, the Party came to power in 1949 with the promise of a new China, fairer and less corrupt; a China that would contrast with the pomp and eccentricities of Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China.

Yet, since the last years of Hu’s presidency, a string of scandals has unveiled the excesses of local dignitaries unscrupulously enriching themselves, surrounding themselves with mistresses, and practising nepotism.

For Xi, this has degraded the image of the Party, and threatened it. Just before becoming president, several cases tarnished the final months of Hu Jintao’s mandate.

First, the revelations provoked by the fall of Bo Xilai, one of the regime’s ‘cherished sons’, another ‘prince’s son’ and one of Xi’s greatest rivals—his father, Bo Yibo, was one of Mao’s comrades-in-arms.

Then came the revelations in the Western media of the personal fortunes of former prime minister Wen Jiabao’s relations.

Henceforth, under Xi’s rule, not a day would pass without the media reporting on the fall of an official in the fight against corruption.

This would be a large-scale purge, affecting hundreds of thousands of officials.

Xi's turbulent childhood experience

Xi lived in a cave-house dug out of the yellow earth. A young city-dweller, he had never been subjected to fleas, but they are omnipresent in this region during the summer. Xi felt he was sleeping on a mattress infested with vermin. The food was also different from what he had been used to. Instead of rice and wheat, he had to content himself with less refined cereals.

This transformation is key to understanding Xi Jinping’s career. He still refers to it today as the founding event of his political life.

In Seattle in 2015, addressing an American audience, he embellished this concrete and daily connection with the peasants ‘who lived in caves dug into the earth’. This period came across as a fundamental part of his personal narrative.

The ‘yellow earth complex’, then, is a deep anchoring force for Xi Jinping, in Mao’s wake. Like the Great Helmsman,

he can pride himself on his extensive knowledge of poor rural China—unlike his predecessor, Hu Jintao, whose career was that of a typical Party apparatchik.

This is a major advantage for Xi, who can claim to be of the masses and not seem detached from their reality.

It allows him to reconcile the ‘nobility’ of his rank as a ‘son of ’ with his acquaintance with the humblest of his people.

What Xi believes in

Xi Jinping sees things very differently. His personal conviction is that, in order not to lose itself,

China needs to return to the zeal of the early days, and to avoid moving towards an independent judiciary system, a hallmark of Western democracy.

For the British sinologist Kerry Brown, Han Fei is definitely the author to look at if you want to understand Xi Jinping.

Looking at the thinking of Han Fei gives at least some clues. In the end, it is about authority, and the need to preserve this. Authority is its own justification. It needs no excuses or explanations.

There is, however, a huge catch for any Chinese who would seriously contemplate taking Han Fei’s words as the basis for modern state behaviour.

The entity that he had most influence over was the Qin, which, despite its immense achievements in unifying China, collapsed under the megalomania of the founding emperor after only two decades in existence

Confucianism

However, it is clear that the school of thought that features most prominently of all in Xi’s speeches is Confucianism.

Confucius is a thinker whom Xi Jinping cherishes, and he does not hesitate to show it.

Less than a year after his accession to the highest public office, on 26 November 2013, the Chinese president travelled to Qufu, Confucius’s birthplace, in the east of the country, setting the start of his mandate under the patronage of this illustrious figure.

During the trip, he took the time to meet with scholars at the Confucius Research Institute, founded in 1996 with the active support of the Jiang government. At the entrance, Xi stopped for a minute before a table covered with books and periodicals.

Two of them caught his eye: one was a commentary on Confucius’ Analects, the other a collection of quotations from the master and his disciples. ‘I want to read these two books carefully,’ he said to the cohort of journalists in tow.

Xi refers to Confucius’ proverbs much more frequently and extensively than his predecessors did. But Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao were no less responsible for this appropriation—they paved the way for it.

Quo Vadis?

A period of transition, and consequently of potential instability, lies ahead.

China’s leaders are worried about the rise of inequality and of social tension in the country, and they need a coherent discourse to deal with these issues.

To construct it, Xi has decided to preserve the state’s Marxist foundations (the principle of fighting against severe social inequalities), to glorify Nationalism (as we shall see further on), and to rely on traditions.

The rise of living standards combined with the one-child policy has led to what is being called within China itself a ‘moral crisis’: the younger generations are undermined by excessive consumerism.

After thirty years of unbridled economic growth and spiritual vacuum, Confucius has been summoned to the rescue to heal Chinese society’s ills.

Xi's China

Is Xi’s China stable? Of course, it is vain to speculate on the country’s future, and no one can say whether the regime will fall all at once or if its leaders are devising a new enviable, solid, and competitive—anything but democratic—model.

It is important to note, however, that sinologists have become increasingly sceptical since 2015.

But until the system begins to unravel in some obvious way, those inside of it will play along—thus contributing to the facade of stability. Communist rule in China is unlikely to end quietly. A single event is unlikely to trigger a peaceful implosion of the regime.

So, will Xi Jinping win his bet? Will he ensure that the Party keeps pace with a society in motion? More importantly, will he succeed in linking neo-authoritarianism and technological innovation? If he succeeds, China may well become the perfect twenty-first-century dictatorship.

‘Communism is the Soviets plus electricity,’ Lenin once said; a full century later, Xi could well reply, ‘Chinese communism is the Party plus artificial intelligence and facial recognition’.

One real threat remains, and I am not the only who sees it: in seeking to turn his country into a leading industrial power by 2049, for the centenary of the People’s Republic of China, Xi is unleashing forces that may yet turn on him.

A creative and innovating China may not be satisfied with the existing framework, and could in future support calls for political reform. But of how great a magnitude?

The fate of the ‘new emperor’ depends, in part, on the answer.