Xi Jinping (English: /ˈʃiː dʒɪnˈpɪŋ/ SHEE jin-PING; Chinese: 习近平; pinyin: Xí Jìnpíng; [ɕǐ tɕîn pʰǐŋ]; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been serving as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, and President of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013. Xi has been the paramount leader of China, the most prominent political leader in China, since 2012. He is often ranked among the most powerful people in the world.
The son of Chinese Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, he was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father's purge during the Cultural Revolution, and lived in a Yaodong in the village of Liangjiahe, where he joined the CCP and worked as the party secretary. After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a "Worker-Peasant-Soldier student", Xi rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces. Xi was Governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, before becoming Governor and Party Secretary of neighbouring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. Following the dismissal of the Party Secretary of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to replace him for a brief period in 2007. He subsequently joined the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP and served as first secretary of the Central Secretariat in October 2007. In 2008, he was designated as Hu Jintao's presumed successor as paramount leader; to that end, Xi was appointed Vice President of the People's Republic of China and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission. He officially received the title of "leadership core" from the CCP in 2016. Xi has also been a member of the 17th, 18th, 19th CCP Politburo Standing Committee since 2007. In 2018, he abolished presidential term limits.
Xi is the first CCP General Secretary born after the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Since assuming power, Xi has introduced far-ranging measures to enforce party discipline and to impose internal unity. His anti-corruption campaign has led to the downfall of prominent incumbent and retired CCP officials, including a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. He has also enacted or promoted a more assertive foreign policy, particularly with regard to China–Japan relations, China's claims in the South China Sea, and its advocacy for free trade and globalization. He has sought to expand China's African and Eurasian influence through the Belt and Road Initiative.
Xi has often been described as a dictator or an authoritarian leader by political and academic observers,[9] citing an increase of censorship and mass surveillance, a deterioration in human rights including the internment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, the cult of personality developing around him,[10] and the removal of term limits for the leadership under his tenure.[a] Xi's political thoughts have been incorporated into the party and national constitutions.[25][26][27] As the central figure of the fifth generation of leadership of the People's Republic, Xi has significantly centralised institutional power by taking on a wide range of leadership positions, including chairing the newly formed National Security Commission, as well as new steering committees on economic and social reforms, military restructuring and modernization, and the Internet.
On 11 November 2021, the CCP declared Xi's ideology the "essence of Chinese culture". This is the third fundamental resolution of the Chinese Communist Party since its inception. The first resolution was adopted in 1945 to increase and ratify the power of Mao Zedong. The decision to issue one under Xi symbolically raises him to the same level of prestige as Mao.
Early life and education
Xi Jinping was born in Beijing on 15 June 1953, the second son of Xi Zhongxun and his wife Qi Xin. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 by Mao Zedong, Xi's father held a series of posts, including Party propaganda chief, vice-premier, and Vice Chairperson of the National People's Congress.[30] Xi had two older sisters, Qiaoqiao, born in 1949 and An'an (安安; Ān'ān), born in 1952.[31][32] Xi's father was from Fuping County, Shaanxi, and Xi could further trace his patrilineal descent from Xiying in Dengzhou, Henan.
Xi went to the Beijing No. 25 School,[34] and then Beijing Bayi School,[35][36] in the 1960s. He became friends with Liu He, who attended Beijing No. 101 School in the same district, who later became China's vice-premier and a close advisor to Xi after he became China's paramount leader.[37][38] In 1963, when he was age 10, his father was purged from the CCP and sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, Henan.[39] In May 1966, the Cultural Revolution cut short Xi's secondary education when all secondary classes were halted for students to criticise and fight their teachers. Student militants ransacked the Xi family home and one of Xi's sisters, Xi Heping, committed suicide from the pressure.[40] Later, his mother was forced to publicly denounce his father, as he was paraded before a crowd as an enemy of the revolution. His father was later thrown into prison in 1968 when Xi was aged 15. Without the protection of his father, Xi was sent to work in Liangjiahe Village, Wen'anyi, Yanchuan County, Yan'an, Shaanxi, in 1969 in Mao Zedong's Down to the Countryside Movement.[41] He worked as the party secretary of Liangjiahe, where he lived in a cave house.[42] After a few months, unable to stand rural life, he ran away to Beijing. He was arrested during a crackdown on deserters from the countryside and sent to a work camp to dig ditches, but later returned to the village, spending a total of seven years there.
The misfortunes and suffering of his family in his early years hardened Xi's view of politics. During an interview in 2000, he said, "People who have little contact with power, who are far from it, always see these things as mysterious and novel. But what I see is not just the superficial things: the power, the flowers, the glory, the applause. I see the bullpens and how people can blow hot and cold. I understand politics on a deeper level." The bullpens was a reference to Red Guards' detention houses during the Cultural Revolution.
After being rejected seven times, Xi joined the Communist Youth League of China in 1971 by befriending a local official. He reunited with his father in 1972, because of a family reunion ordered by Premier Zhou Enlai.[40] From 1973, he applied to join the Chinese Communist Party ten times and was finally accepted on his tenth attempt in 1974.
From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied chemical engineering at Beijing's Tsinghua University as a "Worker-Peasant-Soldier student". The engineering majors there spent about 15 percent of their time studying Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong thought and 5 percent of their time doing farm work and "learning from the People's Liberation Army".
Rise to power
From 1979 to 1982, Xi served as secretary for his father's former subordinate Geng Biao, the then vice premier and secretary-general of the Central Military Commission. This gained Xi some military background.[46] In 1985, as part of a Chinese delegation to study U.S. agriculture, he stayed in the home of an American family in the town of Muscatine, Iowa. This trip, and his two-week stay with a U.S. family, is said to have had a lasting impression upon him and his views on the United States.[50]
In 1982, he was sent to Zhengding County in Hebei as deputy party secretary of Zhengding County. He was promoted in 1983 to secretary, becoming the top official of the county.[51] Xi subsequently served in four provinces during his regional political career: Hebei (1982–1985), Fujian (1985–2002), Zhejiang (2002–2007), and Shanghai (2007).[52] Xi held posts in the Fuzhou Municipal Party Committee and became the president of the Party School in Fuzhou in 1990. In 1997, he was named an alternate member of the 15th Central Committee of the CCP. However, of the 151 alternate members of the Central Committee elected at the 15th Party Congress, Xi received the lowest number of votes in favour, placing him last in the rankings of members, ostensibly due to his status as a princeling.
From 1998 to 2002, Xi studied Marxist theory and ideological education in Tsinghua University,[54] graduating from there with a doctorate in law and ideology in 2002.[55] In 1999, he was promoted to the office of Vice Governor of Fujian, then he became governor a year later. In Fujian, Xi made efforts to attract investment from Taiwan and to strengthen the private sector of the provincial economy.[56] In February 2000, he and then-provincial Party Secretary Chen Mingyi were called before the top members of Central Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP – General Secretary Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji, Vice-President Hu Jintao and Discipline Inspection Secretary Wei Jianxing – to explain aspects of the Yuanhua scandal.
In 2002, Xi left Fujian and took up leading political positions in neighbouring Zhejiang. He eventually took over as provincial Party Committee Secretary after several months as acting governor, occupying a top provincial office for the first time in his career. In 2002, he was elected a full member of the 16th Central Committee, marking his ascension to the national stage. While in Zhejiang, Xi presided over reported growth rates averaging 14% per year.[58] His career in Zhejiang was marked by a tough and straightforward stance against corrupt officials. This earned him a name in the national media and drew the attention of China's top leaders.
Following the dismissal of Shanghai Party secretary Chen Liangyu in September 2006 due to a social security fund scandal, Xi was transferred to Shanghai in March 2007 where he was the party secretary there for seven months.[60][61] In Shanghai, Xi avoided controversy and was known for strictly observing party discipline. For example, Shanghai administrators attempted to earn favour with him by arranging a special train to shuttle him between Shanghai and Hangzhou for him to complete handing off his work to his successor as Zhejiang party secretary Zhao Hongzhu. However, Xi reportedly refused to take the train, citing a loosely enforced party regulation which stipulated that special trains can only be reserved for "national leaders".[62] While in Shanghai, he worked on preserving unity of the local party organisation. He pledged there would be no 'purges' during his administration, despite the fact many local officials were thought to have been implicated in the Chen Liangyu corruption scandal.[63] On most issues Xi largely echoed the line of the central leadership.
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