Inferiority Complex, Family Trauma, and Hunger for Power: Who Xi Jinping Really Is

When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012some predicted that he would be the most liberal leader in the the Chinese Communist Party for his discreet profile and his family history. More than ten years later, the reality is quite different.

Re-elected in October as head of the Communist Party (CCP), Xi won a third five-year term as president, establishing himself as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

In those years, Xi has shown unflinching ambitionintolerance of dissent and desire for control which has touched almost every aspect of daily life in China.

Originally known as the husband of a popular singer, he became a leader whose apparent charisma and deft political narrative created a personality cult not seen since the days of Mao.

But little is known about him or what motivates him.

“I challenge the conventional view that Xi Jinping seeks power for power’s sake,” he told the news agency. AFP Alfred L. Chan, author of a book about his life. “I would say that he aspires to power as an instrument to realize his vision.”.

“He really has a vision for China. He wants China to become the most powerful country in the world.says another biographer, Adrian Geiges.

In this vision, which he calls the “Chinese dream” or “the great renewal of the Chinese nation”, the Communist Party plays a central role.

“Xi is a man of faith… For him, God is the communist partywrote Kerry Brown in her book Xi: A Study in Power. “The biggest mistake the rest of the world is making about Xi is not taking his faith seriously”.

Although his family is part of the party elite, Xi does not seem destined for this position. his father Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary hero who became Deputy Prime Minister, was purged during the Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

“Xi and his family were traumatized», dice Chan.

Overnight, the current president lost his status. One of her half-sisters committed suicide because of the persecution.

Xi was ostracized by his classmates, an experience which, according to political scientist David Shambaugh, contributed to “a emotional and psychological detachment and autonomy from an early age”.

At the age of 15, he was sent to central China, where spent years hauling grain and sleeping in caves. “The intensity of the work struck me,” he admits.

He also participated in sessions during which he had to denounce his own father, as he explained in 1992 to the newspaper The Washington Post. “Even if you don’t understand, they force you to understand… It makes you mature earlier,” he said.

For biographer Chan, these experiences gave him “toughness.”

“He usually goes for everything (…) But he also has has a notion of the arbitrariness of powerthat is why it emphasizes law-based governance”.

Currently, the cave where Xi slept has been transformed into tourist attraction show their concern for the poorest.

During a visit to the AFP in 2016, a local described him as an almost legendary figure, reading books between breaks from hard work, so “you could see he wasn’t a normal guy”.

But the path was not rosy for Xi. Before joining the Communist Party, his request was repeatedly denied by his family inheritance.

And then he started at a “very low level” as a village party leader in 1974, Geiges notes. Of course, “he worked very systematically” and became regional governor of Fujian in 1999provincial party leader in Zhejiang in 2002 and then in Shanghai in 2007.

Nevertheless, his father was rehabilitated in the 1970s after Mao’s death, which strengthened his position.

On a personal level, Xi divorced his first wife to marry popular soprano Peng Liyuan in 1987.then better known than he.

For Cai Xiaoa former leader of the ruling party now in exile in the United States, Xi “suffers from an inferiority complex, knowing that he is poorly educated compared to other senior party leaders.

For him is “sensitive, stubborn and dictatorial“, he writes in a recent article of Foreign Affairs.

But Xi has always considered himself “the heir of the revolution“says Chan.

In 2007, he was appointed to the permanent committee of the Political Bureau, China’s highest decision-making body. And five years later he reached the top, replacing Hu Jintao.

His career did not bode well for the future: repression of civil movements, independent media and academic freedoms, alleged violations of human rights in the Xinjiang regionor a far more aggressive foreign policy than that of his predecessor.

Without access to Xi or those around him, scholars are looking to his early writings for clues to his motivations.

The central importance of the party and its mission “to make China great again is evident from Xi’s early records,” Brown said.

This presidential narrative of a rising China had a great effect on the people, using this nationalism to its advantage to legitimize the party among the people.

But the fear of losing power is also evident.

“The fall of the Soviet Union and socialism in Eastern Europe was a great shock” for XiGeiges likes it.

And his conclusion is that this collapse was due to political openness. “He decided that something like this should not happen in China (…) That’s why he wants a strong leadership of the Communist Party, with a strong leader,” he adds.

(With information from AFP)

Continue reading: