xi jinping biography

Xi Jinping is the top leader in the Communist Party of China and the President of the People’s Republic of China.

Who Is Xi Jinping?

Born in 1953 to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader, Xi Jinping worked his way up the party ranks to become a major player in the Chinese Politburo. By 2013, Xi was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party, Chair of the Military Commission and President of the People’s Republic of China. Although he earned criticism for human rights violations and disruptive economic regulations, Xi also continued the country's rise as a global superpower. His name and philosophy was added to the party constitution in 2017, and the following year he successfully pushed for the abolition of presidential term limits.

In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, a sociopolitical movement intended to preserve “true” Communist ideology and purge remnants of capitalist society. All formal education was halted, and Xi, at that time in high school, was sent down to work in a remote farming village for seven years, doing manual chores and subsisting on rice gruel. It was there that Xi grew up both physically and mentally. Considered a weakling when he first arrived, he grew strong and compassionate and developed good relations working alongside the villagers. Though the Cultural Revolution was a failure, Xi emerged with a sense of idealism and pragmatism.

Rise in the Communist Party

After numerous unsuccessful attempts, in 1974 Xi was accepted into the Communist Party. The following year he began to study chemical engineering at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, earning a degree in 1979. From that point forward, he steadily rose through the ranks of the Communist Party. Between 1979 and 1982, Xi served in the Central Military Command as vice premier, gaining valuable military experience. It was around this time that he married his first wife, Ke Lingling, the daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Great Britain. The marriage ended in divorce within a few years.

From 1983 to 2007, Xi served in leadership positions in four provinces, beginning with Hebei. During his tenure in Hebei, Xi traveled to the United States and spent time in Iowa with an American family, learning the finer points of agriculture and tourism. After his return, he served as vice mayor of Xiamen in Fujian, wherein 1987 he married folk singer Peng Liyuan, who also holds the rank of army general in the People’s Liberation Army. The couple has a daughter, Xi Mingze, who studied at Harvard University under a pseudonym.

National Prominence

Xi would make a steady ascent in the ensuing decades, with postings as governor of the Fujian and Zhejiang provinces and as party secretary. In 2007, his career got a further boost when a pension-fund scandal rocked the leadership of Shanghai and he was named as its party secretary. He spent his tenure promoting stability and restoring the city’s financial image, and that same year was chosen for the Politburo Standing Committee. In early 2008, Xi’s visibility became even greater when he was elected vice president of the People’s Republic of China and placed in charge of preparations for the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing.

Elected Leader of the People's Republic of China

In early 2012, Xi traveled to the United States to meet with President Barack Obama and members of his cabinet. He also made a nostalgic trip back to Iowa and then visited Los Angeles. During his visit, he spoke of increasing trust and reducing suspicions between the two countries while respecting each other’s interests in the Pacific-Asian region.

Later that year, on November 15, Xi was elected general secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission. In his first speech as general secretary, Xi broke from tradition and sounded more like a Western politician, speaking about the aspirations of the average person and calling for better education, stable jobs, higher income, a more reliable safety net of retirement and health care, better living conditions and a better environment. He also vowed to take on corruption within the government at the highest levels. He referred to his vision for the nation as the "Chinese Dream."

On March 14, 2013, Xi completed his ascent when he was elected president of the People’s Republic of China, a ceremonial position as head of state. In his first speech as president he vowed to fight for a great renaissance of the Chinese nation and a more prominent international standing.

Achievements and Controversies

Fulfilling one of his early promises, Xi almost immediately embarked on a campaign to deal with government corruption. He arrested some of the country's most powerful figures, including former security chief Zhou Yongkang, and by the end of 2014 the CCP had disciplined more than 100,000 officials.

Xi also set about stimulating a slowing economy. In 2014, China introduced the "One Belt, One Road" initiative to bolster trade routes and launched the ambitious Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Domestically, his party expanded the power of private banks and allowed international investors to trade shares directly on the Shanghai stock market.

Xi has also changed some of the laws enacted by predecessors, formally ending China's one-child policy in 2015. His elimination of the "reeducation through labor" system, which punished individuals charged with petty crimes, was viewed favorably.

However, the Chinese leader has drawn scrutiny for his methods. Critics have noted that his crackdown on government corruption mainly targeted political opponents, and the CCP has come under fire by human rights groups for jailing journalists, lawyers and other private citizens. Under Xi's reach, censors have sought to eliminate Western influence in school curriculums and limited the public's internet access.

Xi has also overseen economic regulations that have reverberated beyond his country's borders. The government stepped in to prop up a sagging housing market in 2014, and suddenly devalued the yuan in the summer of 2015. Despite promising during a trip to the United States in September that China would never manipulate currency to increase exports, Xi has been accused of that very approach.

Global Standing

As part of his goal to establish China as a 21st-century global superpower, Xi has pushed for military reform to upgrade naval and air forces. Already chairman of the Central Military Commission, in 2016 he added the title of commander in chief of its joint battle command center.

In recent years, Xi has asserted China's naval capacities through the construction of artificial islands within disputed territories of the South China Sea. Despite his claims to the contrary, satellite photographs indicated that the islands were being used to house military developments. In July 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled that China had illegally claimed those territories, although China refused to accept the authority of that ruling.

While often at odds with the U.S. over trade issues, Xi has publicly acknowledged the need for China to cooperate with its Western counterpart on the issue of climate change. In September 2016, Xi and U.S. President Barack Obama announced they were formally adopting the international climate-change agreement reached in Paris the previous December to reduce emissions from the world’s two largest economies.

Relations and Trade War with U.S. President Trump

In November 2017, Xi met with U.S. President Donald Trump for a two-day summit in Beijing. Despite earlier accusing China of being a currency manipulator, Trump offered praise this time around for the country taking advantage of financial opportunities. For his part, Xi spoke about a “win-win” cooperation between the two economic superpowers, announcing memorandums of understanding to increase trade by $253 billion.

However, the two leaders then contrasted one another during their subsequent appearances at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam. In his speech, Trump criticized the development of globalization for harming American workers and companies, declaring, "we are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore." Taking the stage immediately afterward, Xi painted a glowing picture of the collective benefits of globalization, saying, "let more countries ride the fast train of Chinese development."

Tensions between the two sides mounted after Trump ordered stiff tariffs on aluminum and steel imports in March 2018, as part of U.S. efforts to level the "out of control" trade deficit with its Asian counterpart. China responded by slapping tariffs on a range of American goods, including fruits, nuts and pork products, prompting Trump to threaten to escalate the matter further.

Xi sounded a conciliatory note during his speech at the Boao Economic Forum in April, in which he pledged to "significantly broaden market access" for foreign companies by easing restrictions in the financial and auto sectors and lowering import tariffs for vehicles. Additionally, he promised greater protection for intellectual property. "China does not seek a trade surplus," the president said. "We have a genuine desire to increase imports and achieve greater balance of international payments under the current account."

Amid the escalating tensions of a potential trade war, the yuan fell to a six-month low against the dollar in late June, sparking speculation that China would let that course continue and make their goods cheaper on the world market.

Following the announcement that China and the U.S. had agreed to the broad outlines of "phase one" of a trade deal in October 2019, the two sides signed the deal into place in mid-January 2020. Xi hailed the agreement, which included commitments to purchase an additional $200 billion in American goods but did not address his government's subsidies of local industries, as "beneficial to both China, the U.S. and the world."

Expansion of Power

In October 2017, during a meeting of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party, delegates voted to add the words "Xi Jinping Thought for the New Era of Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics" to the party constitution. The addition was meant to serve as a guiding principle for the party moving forward, with Xi's vision paving the way for global leadership in the years to come.

Furthermore, the constitutional change boosted Xi's status to match those of exalted former Communist Party heads Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping . It was believed that, as one of the country's strongest leaders in decades, Xi possessed the ability to hold on to power as long as he desired.

In late February 2018, the Communist Party's Central Committee proposed scrapping term limits for China's president and vice president, potentially setting the table for Xi to govern indefinitely. The National People's Congress formally voted to make the constitutional change the following month, shortly before Xi was confirmed for a second five-year term.

In a speech to close the 16-day legislative session, Xi spoke of forging unification with Taiwan, promoting "high-quality" development that values innovation and expanding his signature Belt and Road foreign policy initiative. "The new era belongs to everyone, and everyone is a witness, pioneer and builder of the new era," he said. "As long as we are united and struggle together, there will be no power to stop the Chinese people from realizing their dreams."

Coronavirus

Xi faced a new challenge in the final days of 2019 with the outbreak of a pneumonia-like illness in the city of Wuhan. Chinese authorities attempted to close off Wuhan on January 23, 2020, but the new coronavirus had already escaped the country's borders; by February 10, it was reported that more than 900 people had died from the virus in China alone, surpassing the total from the SARS epidemic of 2002-3.

Xi and the Communist Party drew criticism for their initial response to the crisis — including a reported attempt to silence the doctor who first raised the alarm about the illness — and for the crackdown on travel and personal liberties that followed. However, the government's efforts appeared to be paying off with the rate of new infections finally slowing in March, prompting the president to make his first visit to Wuhan since the outbreak began.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 1953
• Birth date: June 15, 1953
• Birth City: Beijing
• Birth Country: China
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Xi Jinping is the top leader in the Communist Party of China and the President of the People’s Republic of China.
• Astrological Sign: Gemini
• Tsinghua University
• Nacionalities

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• Article Title: Xi Jinping Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
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• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 9, 2020
• Original Published Date: March 14, 2016
• During the civilization and development process of more than 5,000 years, the Chinese nation as made an indelible contribution to the civilization and advancement of mankind.
• Some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us. First, China does not export revolution; second it does not export famine and poverty; and third, it does not mess with you. So what else is there to say?

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Xi Jinping, male, Han nationality, is a native of Fuping County, Shaanxi Province. He was born in 1953, entered the work force in 1969, joined the CYLC in 1971 and joined the CPC in 1974. Xi has served in four provinces during his government and Party career: Shaanxi, Hebei, Fujian and Zhejiang. He has held Party positions in the CPC Fuzhou City Committee, and in 1990 he became president of the Party school in Fuzhou City. In 1999 he was elected vice-governor of Fujian province, then governor a year later. In 2002 he took up senior government and Party positions in Zhejiang Province. Xi Jinping was an alternate member of the 15th CPC Central Committee and was a member of the 16th CPC Central Committee. In 2007 he became a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo Bureau of the 17th CPC Central Committee and Chairman of 17th CPC Central Committee Party Building Leading Small Group. He is also the President of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee. In 2008, he became Vice-President of the People's Republic of China. In 2010 he became Vice-Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission and Vice-Chairman, Central Military Commission of the PRC. In 2012 he became General Secretary of the 18th CPC Central Committee a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the 18th CPC Central Committee and Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission. In 2013 Xi was elected Chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission and President of China. In 2014 Xi became head of China's new national security commission. In 2017 Xi became Head of the CPC Central Committee's Central Commission for Integrated Military and Civilian Development. He was also named as a delegate to 19th CPC National Congress. As of 2017 Xi is also General Secretary of the 19th CPC Central Committee a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the 19th CPC Central Committee and Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission.

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What Xi Jinping's decade in power means for people in China — in their own words

John Ruwitch

Xi Jinping (center) greets the media at the Great Hall of the People on Nov. 15, 2012, in Beijing. China's Communist Party revealed the new Politburo Standing Committee after its 18th congress. At this week's 20th congress, Xi is expected to be granted another term as head of the party and military. Lintao Zhang/Getty Images hide caption

Xi Jinping (center) greets the media at the Great Hall of the People on Nov. 15, 2012, in Beijing. China's Communist Party revealed the new Politburo Standing Committee after its 18th congress. At this week's 20th congress, Xi is expected to be granted another term as head of the party and military.

Xi Jinping has become China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and is expected to be handed a norm-breaking third term this week. NPR has been speaking with a broad range of people from China about the impact of his decade in power. Here is what four of them had to say.

BEIJING — Ten years ago, with more than 2,000 delegates in front of him, Xi Jinping smiled graciously when he took the helm of the most populous nation on the planet and the world's second-largest economy.

He had risen through the Communist Party ranks and even served as vice president. Yet few understood his ambition or knew what to expect.

One person paying close attention was a scholar named Ilham Tohti. Initially, he was apparently happy to see Xi elevated to the top role of the party's general secretary.

"He sounded so excited. He's like, 'I think it's going to change now. Things are going to get better,'" says the scholar's daughter, Jewher Ilham, who lives in the United States.

But the past decade in China has been marked by new levels of authoritarianism — and nowhere has it been clearer than in the country's western region of Xinjiang.

Ilham Tohti, university professor, blogger and activist, in Beijing on Jun 12, 2010. Tohti, an outspoken activist for Uyghur rights, was sentenced to life imprisonment in China for "separatism." Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Ilham Tohti, university professor, blogger and activist, in Beijing on Jun 12, 2010. Tohti, an outspoken activist for Uyghur rights, was sentenced to life imprisonment in China for "separatism."

Ilham Tohti, 53 this month, is a member of the Uyghur ethnic group, which calls Xinjiang home. He made a name for himself as an outspoken activist for Uyghur rights and the Uyghur language and culture.

He was arrested in January 2014 and later that year sentenced to life in prison for "separatism."

It was an early salvo in Xi's unprecedented crackdown on Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the name of fighting terrorism and separatism.

By some estimates, a million or more people would eventually be detained. The U.S. has called it genocide . The United Nations' top human rights official said in a recent report that abuses in Xinjiang may have amounted to crimes against humanity. China denies any wrongdoing.

But the sweeping crackdown was clear indication that Xi was a different kind of leader.

These are 4 key points from Xi's speech at the Chinese Communist Party congress

Few outside the party's secretive elite know exactly how or why Xi was installed as party boss a decade ago.

It was a time, though, when many felt the party was in peril, riddled with corruption, and at risk of losing its moral authority. Xi's task, according to a common narrative, was to clean things up and reassert the Communist Party's dominance across the board.

He has embraced the mission. But one of the biggest challenges he faced was unexpected: the 2019 outbreak of a deadly coronavirus.

Battling COVID keeps citizens locked down

In a yoga class in Shanghai, an instructor with a ponytail and tattoos runs his students through a series of movements.

He goes by the name Vis. He did not want to use his full name to avoid trouble from the authorities for speaking freely to a journalist.

Earlier this year, he was stuck at home, his business dried up and his anger boiling over.

"We were locked in for four months in total. It was the longest [lockdown] in Shanghai," he says.

Workers and volunteers look on in a compound where residents are tested for COVID-19 during the second stage of a pandemic lockdown in Jing'an district in Shanghai on April 4. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Workers and volunteers look on in a compound where residents are tested for COVID-19 during the second stage of a pandemic lockdown in Jing'an district in Shanghai on April 4.

China has faced the coronavirus pandemic with an unflinching "zero COVID" policy that Xi has thrown his weight firmly behind. To him, the low death toll and case count is evidence that his country's political system is superior to those in the West, where the virus has killed millions of people.

But it comes with a cost. The impact on the economy has been huge, with heightened uncertainty smothering consumer confidence and rendering business planning all but impossible.

And the effect of lockdowns has been brutal on many people.

"We were helpless and also felt like crying," says Vis, talking about the last lockdown.

Vis and his neighbors — who were effectively imprisoned in their compound — drafted a statement of protest. He recorded it and they played it in public for all to hear.

For that, he was detained by the police for 11 days. Vis makes a point of saying he is not political and he does not blame anyone.

The lockdown started in early spring. Since it was lifted in June, Vis has pieced his yoga business back together for the most part. But he says it left a scar on everyone.

"If it happened once, it could happen a second time," Vis says. "In China there's a saying: If you're bitten by a snake, you'll be afraid of coiled rope for a decade."

Xi addresses China's pressing problems

It is hard to gauge public opinion in China. Independent polling on politics is banned, and speaking out against the Communist Party can get you thrown in jail. But many people do say they genuinely like Xi and think he is doing a fine job leading the country.

"Xi Jinping is a good man," says Lao Zhang, whom NPR met by a lake in a Beijing park. "I think he's honest and upright."

A retired factory worker, Zhang, 72, has seen a lot of change in China over his lifetime.

Prior to starting work in a field, young people read some of "Mao Zedong Thoughts" together in Nanshanglo administrative district on July 7, 1967. This is probably a propaganda picture set up during the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." Xinhua/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Prior to starting work in a field, young people read some of "Mao Zedong Thoughts" together in Nanshanglo administrative district on July 7, 1967. This is probably a propaganda picture set up during the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."

During the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Zhang was sent to the northwestern Chinese countryside to work not far from the area where Xi toiled as a youth in that turbulent era. Zhang says he's known about Xi since then — and liked his style.

Zhang believes Xi understands the plight of the country's poor because of his experience in the Cultural Revolution, and has been able to take action that his predecessors could not because he is what is known as a "princeling" — the child of revolutionaries. Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun, was a guerrilla fighter in the civil war and later a vice premier.

He applauds Xi for boldly addressing what he says are China's most pressing problems — corruption, poverty and inequality.

And he praises Xi for unapologetically standing up for China on the international stage.

"We want him to stay in office and have at least one more term," says Zhang. Barring the unforeseen, he seems likely to get his wish.

He imposes the law on Hong Kong

Critics, however, say Xi has overplayed his hand and that his toughness is creating more problems for China in the long run than it is solving.

The situation in Hong Kong is an example. The former British colony had a vibrant pro-democracy movement, an active civil society, and the people enjoyed freedom of speech.

China's major party congress is set to grant Xi Jinping a 3rd term. And that's not all

In 2014, street protests erupted in the city in what became known as the "Umbrella Movement" — openly calling for the right to directly elect the city's leaders.

One of those involved in the weeks-long demonstrations was Chung Ching Kwong, who was 16 years old at the time.

"They're banning us from having universal suffrage, so we're going to protest because that should be a fundamental right," Kwong says.

Five years later, a proposed extradition law sparked fresh demonstrations . Kwong — who was getting her master's degree in Germany — flew home to join them.

Pro-democracy protesters are arrested by police in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong on May 24, 2020, ahead of planned protests against proposed security legislation in Hong Kong. Isaac Lawrence/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Pro-democracy protesters are arrested by police in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong on May 24, 2020, ahead of planned protests against proposed security legislation in Hong Kong.

The protests were often huge, involving hundreds of thousands of people, and sometimes violent.

In 2020, Beijing took a step that would change everything — imposing a sweeping National Security Law on Hong Kong. The arrests that followed decimated Hong Kong's democracy movement.

China's tough Hong Kong law grows teeth

Xi has not blinked. At the opening session of the party congress in Beijing on Sunday, he said the "one country, two systems" model for running Hong Kong is a "great innovation" and that China has successfully overcome "grave challenges to its national security" in the territory.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (center) waves to senior members of the government as he leaves at the end of the opening ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at The Great Hall of People in Beijing on Sunday. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images hide caption

Chinese President Xi Jinping (center) waves to senior members of the government as he leaves at the end of the opening ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at The Great Hall of People in Beijing on Sunday.

Under the agreement that led to Britain's return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the territory was promised that it would be able to maintain its system and manage its own affairs with a "high degree of autonomy." Critics say China has reneged on that promise.

For Kwong, and others, China's security law has meant the end of a way of life — and exile.

"Basically, my life has, like, gone to pieces because of Xi Jinping," she said. "I lost my home. I lost a lot of my friends. And I'll never set foot in Hong Kong again."

The Communist Party made a wager 10 years ago — that a tougher leader with an unapologetic approach was necessary to keep the party in power and make China stronger.

This week it will be doubling down on that bet.

Aowen Cao contributed research from Beijing.

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Timeline: Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s rise and rule

FILE - Chinese President Xi Jinping waves as he attends a gala show ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing on June 28, 2021. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

Chinese President Xi Jinping waves at an event to introduce new members of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

FILE - This photo provided by China’s Xinhua News Agency shows Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping, right, then secretary of the Ningde Prefecture Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), participates in farm work during his investigation in the countryside in 1988. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Xinhua, File)

FILE - This photo provided by China’s Xinhua News Agency shows Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan in September 1989. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (Xinhua via AP, File)

FILE - Xi Jinping, then Shanghai’s Communist Party chief holds the torch for the Special Olympic Games to be held in Shanghai, China, on Sept. 29, 2007. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Xi Jinping, then Shanghai’s Communist Party chief, attends a ceremony to launch the countdown clock for the Shanghai Special Olympic Games in Shanghai, China, on June 24, 2007. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - In this undated file photo provided by China’s Xinhua News Agency, Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping carries his daughter with a bicycle in Fuzhou, the capital of southeast China’s Fujian Province. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (Xinhua via AP, File)

FILE - Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping watches the performing schoolgirls in the gymnasium of Hungarian-Chinese Bilingual Primary School in Budapest, Hungary, on Oct. 16, 2009. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (Laszlo Beliczay/MTI via AP, File)

FILE - Vice President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China kicks a football during visit to Croke Park Stadium, Dublin, Ireland on Feb. 19, 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Brendan Moran, Pool, File)

FILE - Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, Vice President Joe Biden, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and others, watch a Dragon dance by students at the International Studies Learning Center in South Gate, Calif. , on Feb. 17, 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

FILE - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping at the State Department in Washington on Feb. 14, 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

FILE - A woman on her electric-powered scooter films a large video screen outside a shopping mall showing Chinese President Xi Jinping speaking during an event to commemorate the 100th anniversary of China’s Communist Party at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on July 1, 2021. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

FILE - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, right, and Xi Jinping, Zhejiang Province Communist Party Secretary, left, speak on Sept. 19, 2006 in Hangzhou, China. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

FILE - Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin review an honor guard during a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on June 25, 2016. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

FILE - Incoming Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, casts his vote into a box as Vice Premier Li Keqiang, right, looks on during a plenary session of the National People’s Congress held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 14, 2013. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

FILE - Chinese President Xi Jinping is displayed on a screen as performers dance at a gala show ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing on June 28, 2021. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

FILE - Shanghai party chief Xi Jinping, center, shakes hands with other delegates during the closing ceremony for the 17th Communist Party Congress held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on Oct. 21, 2007. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

FILE - New Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping waves as he stands with new members of the Politburo Standing Committee in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Nov. 15, 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)

FILE - Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping hits a giant bell during his visit to Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar on Dec. 19, 2009. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Khin Maung Win, File)

FILE - From left, China’s former Premier Wen Jiabao, newly installed President Xi Jinping, former chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Jia Qinglin and newly appointed Premier Li Kiqiang leave after the closing session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing China on March 17, 2013. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

FILE - Residents walk through a security checkpoint into the Hotan Bazaar where a screen shows Chinese President Xi Jinping in Hotan in western China’s Xinjiang region on Nov. 3, 2017. Chinese President Xi Jinping was the son of a communist revolutionary leader, a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial leader who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

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BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping, the son of a communist revolutionary leader, was a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial chief during China’s economic boom before ascending to the very top a decade ago.

On Sunday, China’s 69-year-old leader secured a widely expected third term as general secretary of the ruling Communist Party, paving the way for him to remain in power for at least five more years — and possibly longer.

In his first decade in power, he tightened state control over the economy and society and promoted a more muscular foreign and defense policy, all while establishing himself as one of the most powerful leaders in China’s modern history.

EARLY YEARS

June 15, 1953: Born in Beijing, the son of Xi Zhongxun, a senior Communist Party official and former guerrilla commander in the civil war that brought the communists to power in 1949.

1969-75: At the age of 15, Xi is among many educated urban youths sent to live and work in poor rural villages during the Cultural Revolution , a period of social upheaval launched by then-leader Mao Zedong.

1975-79: Returns to Beijing to study chemical engineering at prestigious Tsinghua University.

1979-82: Joins military as aide in Central Military Commission and Defense Ministry.

1982-85: Assigned as deputy and then leader of the Communist Party in Zhengding county, south of Beijing in Hebei province.

PROVINCIAL LEADER

1985: Begins 17-year stint in coastal Fujian province, a manufacturing hub, as vice mayor of the city of Xiamen.

1987: Marries Peng Liyuan, a popular singer in the People’s Liberation Army’s song and dance troupe. They have one daughter. An earlier marriage for Xi fell apart after three years.

2000-2002: Governor of Fujian province.

2002: Transferred to neighboring Zhejiang province, where he is appointed party chief, a post that outranks governor in the Chinese system.

March 2007: Appointed party chief of Shanghai but stays only a few months.

October 2007: Joins national leadership as one of nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the top leadership of the Communist Party.

March 2008: Named vice president of China.

August 2011: Xi hosts then-Vice President Joe Biden on the latter’s visit to China, nearly a decade before Biden becomes U.S. president.

NATIONAL LEADER

November 2012: Replaces Chinese President Hu Jintao as general secretary of the Communist Party, the top party position.

March 2013: Starts first five-year term as president of China.

2013-2014: China begins reclaiming land in the South China Sea to build islands, some with runways and other infrastructure, pushing its territorial claims to disputed areas in the vital waterway.

2017: China launches a harsh crackdown on the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in the Xinjiang region after extremist attacks. Mass detentions and human rights abuses draw international condemnation and accusations of genocide.

October 2017: The party enshrines his ideology, known as “Xi Jinping Thought,” in its constitution as he starts a second five-year term as leader. This symbolically elevates him to Mao’s level as a leader whose ideology is identified by his name.

March 2018: China’s legislature abolishes a two-term limit on the presidency, signaling Xi’s desire to stay in power for more than 10 years.

2ND TERM CHALLENGES

July 2018: The United States, under President Donald Trump, imposes tariffs on Chinese imports, starting a trade war. China retaliates with tariffs on U.S. goods.

June-November 2019: Massive protests demanding greater democracy paralyze Hong Kong. Xi’s government responds by imposing a national security law in mid-2020 that quashes dissent in the city.

January 2020: China locks down the city of Wuhan as a new virus sparks what will become the COVID-19 pandemic.

September 2020: Xi announces in a video speech to the U.N. General Assembly that China aims to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

December 2020: Authorities announce an anti-monopoly investigation into e-commerce giant Alibaba, the start of a crackdown on China’s high-flying tech companies.

September 2021: China’s highly indebted real estate industry, an important driver of growth, enters a prolonged slump sparked by developer Evergrande Group’s inability to meet regulatory restrictions imposed in 2020 to rein in debt.

February 2022: Xi moves China closer to Russia, meeting President Vladimir Putin at the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Three weeks later, Russia invades Ukraine. China refrains from criticizing Russia’s aggression.

August 2022: China launches missiles in major military exercises around Taiwan following the visit of a senior U.S. lawmaker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to the self-governing island that China claims as its territory.

October 2022: Xi starts a third five-year term as Communist Party leader, breaking with recent precedent that limited leaders to two terms.

Xi Jinping's rise to power started when his father, Xi Zhongxun, fell from grace

The chant of "down with Xi Jinping" is something the President of China first heard when he was a schoolboy.

Key points:

Xi Jinping's childhood changed when his father was purged from a senior role in the Chinese Communist Party

China's President often talks about how being sent to the countryside to live in a cave as a teenager made him tough

• Former prime minister Kevin Rudd says early in his career Mr Xi seemed determined not just to lead, but to reshape China's future

The reason Mr Xi was denounced while he was still a teenager was because his father, Xi Zhongxun, who was the vice-premier of China, had fallen from grace.

Joseph Torigian, an expert in Chinese elite politics who is writing a biography of Xi Jinping's father, says the fall in status Xi Jinping suffered during this period shaped the future President of China.

Once a comrade of Chairman Mao and a member of the first generation of Chinese communist leaders, Mr Xi's father was sensationally cast down as a traitor of communist ideals in the early 1960s, when Mr Xi was just nine years old.

"Xi Zhongxun was removed from his position of vice-premier, and he was sent to a sort of confinement in the party school," Dr Torigian told the ABC podcast China, If You're Listening.

"He was told to write self-criticisms, reflect on what he had done wrong, and engage in manual labour to reform himself."

Eventually, he was given a small reprieve and given a job as a deputy manager of a tractor factory, before being kidnapped and sent to Xi'an during the Cultural Revolution.

He had once been one of the most powerful men in China, but Xi Zhongxun now found himself at the bottom of China's social hierarchy, as Chairman Mao empowered the youth of the country to weed out the old guard, of whom Mao had become suspicious.

For a young Xi Jinping, it was also a stunning turn in fortunes.

As a boy, Xi Jinping was denounced

Four years after Xi Zhongxun was purged, Chairman Mao triggered the terrifying Cultural Revolution.

Mao, who was in his 70s, had become wary of political rivals from his own generation, and to consolidate his power he unleashed a wave of discontent from the younger generation.

He empowered young dogmatic followers in China with what he described as "the right to rebel".

He called on the youth of China to rebel against the people who tried to control them — their teachers, the police, the landlords, the government.

Children spied on their parents. People were humiliated in the streets.

Professor Feng Chongyi from the University of Technology in Sydney grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution.

As a child, he and all his schoolmates would have to attend what were called "struggle sessions", where people were punished for their betrayal of Mao's communist ideals in public.

The crowd would hurl abuse, objects and sometimes their fists.

"Many of them were beaten to death," Professor Feng said.

"One of my aunts was beaten to death during the night."

This was the atmosphere that surrounded Xi Jinping's family's fall from grace.

After his father was purged, the younger Xi was occasionally kidnapped and put in jail, and his mother was repeatedly humiliated in struggle sessions.

Both of Xi Jinping's parents were physically harassed and his siblings were also tormented and humiliated.

During this time, his sister died and reports said she was "persecuted to death" — generally thought to be a euphemism for suicide.

Xi Jinping went to one struggle session with his mother Qi Xin, where he was the subject of the crowd's anger, said Dr Torigian.

"Ms Qi did attend one struggle session where her teenage son was criticised and the slogan 'down with Xi Jinping' was shouted," he said.

"Xi Jinping's mother was allegedly a participant in that shouting."

This was the kind of division that was sown between families and friends during the Cultural Revolution.

"A night around that same time, Xi Jinping left his confinement at the [Chinese Communist] Party school, when a guard was distracted, and went home and told his mother that he was hungry, but his mother didn't give him food, and in fact reported him," Dr Torigian said.

"Although interestingly, according to this friend of the family who tells the story, Xi Jinping understood his mother's behaviour, noting that if she was caught, she would be arrested and a brother and sister would have no-one to take care of them."

The young Mr Xi was arrested the next day and sent to a juvenile detention facility.

The experience that hardened him into a future leader

Mr Xi was eventually sent with other young people who'd fallen out of favour to work on farms in Shaanxi.

He claims he didn't cry on the train, filled with other children. He said he laughed.

"My family standing outside the car all said, 'how could you be laughing?'" Mr Xi has said.

"I said, 'if I was staying, I would be crying, if I did not go, I don't even know if I would live or die here.'"

This is the beginning of the Xi Jinping myth, how the boy cast out to the countryside rebuilt himself through labour and force of will.

He lived in a cave house, carved into the rock face with a door and windows.

"We once didn't have meat to eat for several months. When I saw meat the next time, my classmate and I just cut it off and ate it raw," Mr Xi once said in an interview reflecting on that time.

About 70 young people who were sent to work on the farms in Shaanxi died there.

Mr Xi turned his punishment into a story, according to Dr Torigian, about being forged into a resilient man who understood the needs of poorer Chinese people.

"He talks about how witnessing this abject poverty helped him appreciate the needs for the party to address those extraordinary challenges," Dr Torigian said.

"Then, of course, he talks about how tough it made him."

Chairman Mao died in 1976, and by 1978 Xi Zhongxun was one of many in the old guard who were eventually swept back into power

The Xi family were reunited but Xi Jinping returned more devoted to the Chinese Communist Party than ever before.

The man of destiny

By the mid-1980s, Xi Jinping was forging through the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party and had been appointed vice-mayor of Xiamen, a city of about 550,000 people at the time.

This is where former prime minister Kevin Rudd met him for the first time, when Mr Rudd was working as a diplomat.

The two men bonded over discussing Bob Hawke, who they observed had some unfortunate luck with being translated.

"[For example] 'Well, we're not going to play silly buggers with you on this,' which, of course, the Chinese interpreter rendered as, 'we should not engage in games of happy homosexuals'." Mr Rudd said.

The two men crossed paths again when Xi Jinping had ascended to the vice presidency of China and was being feted to become the leader of the world's most populous country, and Mr Rudd was prime minister of Australia

"I remember sitting with him in front of the fire at the lodge, because it was June," Mr Rudd said.

Mr Rudd would be ousted by his own party just days later.

"I should have been attending more to the factions of the Australian Labor Party than the factions of the Chinese Communist Party at the time, but that's another story," he said.

They discussed the future of the two countries and of the Asia-Pacific, but Mr Rudd said that speaking about Mr Xi's father, the man who had been cast down during his childhood, is what brought out the biggest response.

"A lot of those conversations began with discussions about family," he said.

"I'd introduced him to our kids and he told me about his daughter.

"And then we began talking about his father; I think that's when he became really engaged in the conversation, because as a former embassy analyst, his father had been a Politburo member when I was back in the embassy in the mid-80s.

"So we had a long conversation about his dad."

Even then, Mr Rudd said it was obvious that being president of China was not the end of Mr Xi's ambition, and the true goal was what he could do with the presidency.

"In my early judgment of him, he saw himself very much as, quote, the man of destiny. That is, someone who could reshape China's future," he said.

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Xi Jinping’s Radical Secrecy

This is not just a challenge for biographers. It makes China harder to predict and the world more dangerous.

Xi Jinping has never given a press conference. He is the head of China’s ruling Communist Party—a colossal, sprawling political machine with 96.7 million members—yet he does not have a press secretary. His office does not preannounce his domestic travel or visitor log. He does not tweet.

What are billed by the official media as important speeches are typically not released until months after Xi has delivered them in closed forums. Even then, the published versions can be pallid reworkings of the documents that have been circulated internally and, very occasionally, leaked.

The secretiveness of Beijing’s ruling party might once have been dismissed as a mere eccentricity, fodder for an industry of intelligence analysts and academic Pekingologists to sort through for clues about top-level machinations. But with Xi now often described, without hyperbole, as the “ world’s most powerful man ,” and on the verge of winning a norm-breaking third term later this year at the party congress, Beijing’s radical opacity has real-world consequences.

How would Xi, for example, make any decision to invade Taiwan ? What would happen if the military pushed back? Could the politburo vote to overrule Xi? Does Xi feel pressure from the public to take the island? Almost anything China does has global fallout these days, but its internal debates and its decision-making processes are almost entirely hidden.

The challenge of finding out much at all about Xi is certainly evident in a raft of recent biographies (by, variously, the Canadian academic Alfred L. Chan ; the British Sinologist Kerry Brown ; and two German journalists, Stefan Aust and Adrian Geiges ). The manner in which anyone writing about Xi and his government is forced to sniff around the perimeters of the party-state in search of scraps of information reminded me of a recurring conversation I had in China when I lived there as a journalist, on and off for about 15 years from the mid-1990s, and then during multiple visits since. I often heard the refrain from Chinese officials “You don’t understand China!” when they complained about this or that article of mine. My stock reply was: “You don’t want me to understand China!”

Read: How Xi Jinping blew it

China’s official media awards draw the red lines very clearly for local journalists, who are, inevitably, far better informed than foreigners in an unapologetically closed system . To be considered for a reporting prize, according to the independent China Media Project, journalists must “love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party” and adhere to the principle of “public opinion guidance.”

Heaven help any Chinese journalist who might manage to publish a real-time account of Xi’s decision making. At best, they would be out of a job. More likely, they would end up behind bars. Foreigners can simply be banned from entering the country ever again.

Putting aside the political dangers that secrecy engenders, Xi Jinping’s personal story alone makes him a gripping subject. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revolutionary hero and a senior official in Mao Zedong’s post-1949 government who was purged in 1962 and later sent into internal exile. Xi Zhongxun was then denounced in struggle sessions and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, a radical mobilization that Mao Zedong unleashed in 1965 to destroy his enemies.

During that turmoil, Xi himself, after starting life in an elite academy in Beijing, was exiled to an impoverished village in central China as a teenager. A so-called sent-down youth, he toiled in the fields and dug ditches.

Even then, after Mao died in 1976 and China began to embrace the market, Xi did not have an entirely easy ride. Thanks to his father’s rehabilitation, Xi did enjoy some advantages as the offspring of “red nobility,” gaining entry into a prestigious university before the education system had fully reopened. But after a stint as an aide to China’s defense minister during his military service, he was forced to build his career by doing the same hard slog as other Chinese officials.

Xi went to work in coastal Fujian, across from Taiwan, starting in a small, relatively poor city. During his 18-year stint in the province, he managed to avoid becoming embroiled in any of the local corruption scandals, and ended up as Fujian’s governor. Once he left there, for nearby Zhejiang province, he rose rapidly, transferring to Shanghai, the up escalator of Chinese politics. He rode it to Beijing to become the leader-in-waiting, eventually taking over as party secretary and head of the military in 2012, and state president the following year.

In Xi’s case, we know more about him than we do about previous Chinese leaders, in part because, before rising to the party’s top ranks, he talked about his upbringing. The party itself has published a series of reverent oral histories on his years as a sent-down youth and as an official in the provinces.

All of that can be illuminating as far as it goes—like shining a flashlight into the corner of a dark room and no farther. But the real business of Chinese politics, together with the rest of Xi’s story, remains securely locked down. These glimpses from his past encase his life in an official mythology and largely obscure, or avoid altogether, crucial questions about how he came to power and survived at turning points in his career.

None of the local or foreign books about him can explain with clarity how the party chose Xi as the nominated successor to Hu Jintao in 2007. Was it because Xi was considered independent of the party’s main competing factions? Did his revolutionary family roots swing the vote in his favor? Did a council of party elders support him? Who makes up the council of elders, anyway? Do they ever meet, in fact?

Read: The world according to Xi Jinping

Formally, the head of the Communist Party in China is chosen by the Central Committee, the roughly 370-member body that acts as kind of the expanded board of directors of China, Inc. But there is no recorded instance of the committee ever exercising any genuine scrutiny of the party, let alone tussling over who should be leader.

Nor do any writings about Xi illuminate whatever mandate he was given when he assumed leadership of the party in late 2012, amid evident political turmoil. That mystery is a live issue to this day. China’s official press, quoting senior officials, has accused a Xi rival, Bo Xilai , and his associates of attempting to stage an intraparty coup around this time. Bo was the charismatic party secretary of the megacity of Chongqing, in western China, and like Xi, the son of a revolutionary hero. He is now in jail.

Xi’s first 100 days or so in office were a whirlwind, perhaps partly as a response to Bo’s attempted putsch. Xi inaugurated an anti-corruption campaign, began locking up liberals, set anti-poverty targets, and announced the Belt and Road Initiative, a multibillion-dollar project to invest—and build influence—in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and beyond.

In late 2017, after five years in power, he dispensed with the convention of naming a successor. The following year, Xi abolished term limits on the presidency, effectively making himself leader in perpetuity.

Xi’s harshness shocked many in the system, and still does. What deals did he have to cut to get his way? The Communist Party, after all, is a political machine before anything else. If he went way past what his patrons had wanted him to do, we are, again, none the wiser.

Writing contemporaneous history in China is hard enough. Even telling its recent history is a struggle. Take, for example, the way that China-literate Westerners routinely credit Deng Xiaoping with opening the country up to market reforms in the late 1970s. As moments in history go, they don’t come much bigger than this: The economic powerhouse that China is today dates from the point when the party-state decided to kick-start growth in the aftermath of Mao’s death. Deng gets all the credit for these market-led measures, which is what we might call the “ Time Man of the Year” version of history (Deng won the award twice, in 1978 and 1985). But this doesn’t square with the facts.

Read: When Biden went to China

The historians Warren Sun of Monash University and Frederick Teiwes of the University of Sydney make a persuasive case that the important reforms were under way before Deng took over in 1978. According to their research, published in 2011 yet sometimes overlooked, Deng’s predecessor, Hua Guofeng, set in motion just about all of the policies that Deng is now credited with. Deng was important, of course, but he possessed the indispensable quality of strong Chinese leaders. He made sure that the history was written in his favor, reducing Hua to a hapless leader who had obstructed change—the reverse of the truth.

Under Xi, the battle over history has gone to another level, both in service of his own career and to ensure that the party can dictate whatever version of events it needs to align with current policy.

Glenn Tiffert, a historian of modern China at the Hoover Institution, made a remarkable discovery about a decade ago when researching the legal debates in China in the 1950s over issues such as judicial independence and the ascendancy of the law over politics and class. By comparing the original journals in his possession that aired these usually savage debates with their digital editions, Tiffert noticed that scores of articles had been excised from the online records. Any historian fresh to the issue and without access to the scarce hard copies could never have known that China had conducted such debates at all.

The doctoring of the records was designed to buttress the party’s vehement opposition to Western legal concepts. “The more faithful scholars are to this adulterated source base and the sanitized reality it projects, the more they may unwittingly promote the agendas of the censors,” Tiffert wrote .

Formal restrictions on research are also getting tighter. Over the past decade or so, China has been restricting access to its archives. In 2013, the foreign ministry placed about 90 percent of its collection out of reach. Those archives are now closed to the public altogether.

The tightening of access to sources, official and otherwise, has run in parallel with the introduction of a new criminal offense of “ historical nihilism ,” which can be wheeled out to suppress any version of the past that the party doesn’t like. In 2021, China’s internet regulator, doubtless trying to curry favor with Xi ahead of the party’s 100th anniversary later that year, announced that it had deleted 2 million posts containing “harmful” discussion of history on social-media sites such as Weibo (China’s equivalent of Twitter) and the ubiquitous messaging service WeChat.

With so many obstacles in their way, historians of modern China, foreign and local, are like detectives in a dangerous, suspicious neighborhood. One of the rising scholars of Chinese elite politics, Joseph Torigian of American University, teaches a course in fact called “Scholar as Detective.”

Decades may pass before the archives are accessible again or another time when the Chinese themselves, who are either unable or afraid to talk, start to publish memoirs and the like. Without that opening up, we will have little opportunity to gain deep insight into the inner workings of Xi’s rule. By then, our assessments will be academic: Xi’s grand ambitions for China will have played out—with wildly unpredictable results, for his country and for the rest of the world.

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Xi by Kerry Brown review – the man who became China’s president

His personal life remains an enigma, but this is a valuable primer for anyone looking to get up to speed on Xi Jinping’s rise to global power

I n November 2012 Xi Jinping was made general secretary of the Chinese Communist party, the top spot in the country’s political system. Since March 2013 he has also been president, a largely ceremonial but diplomatically significant post. Having held those positions for almost a decade, and showing no sign that he plans to hand either on anytime soon, Xi is now sometimes described not just as the most powerful person in China, but the most powerful individual in the world.

And yet we know relatively little about him, a fact that Kerry Brown’s new biography – though thorough in many respects – fails to fully remedy. The facts of Xi’s early life are fairly well documented. The son of a veteran revolutionary, his family went through a major reversal of fortune late in the Mao period, when his father was purged. Xi went from enjoying a privileged lifestyle in Beijing to becoming one of the millions of “sent down” youths encouraged to learn from the peasants by working in the countryside. Once his father was back in favour under Deng Xiaoping, he studied at China’s elite Tsinghua University and took up various posts, first in the military and then in civilian bureaucracies.

The dramatic upward trajectory of Xi’s life began when he was in his 50s, a period during which he was named Hu Jintao’s heir apparent, in 2007. His period in power, initially expected to last 10 years, has encompassed the longest lasting and furthest reaching anti-corruption drive the country has ever seen, the belt and road initiative that seeks to establish ties between the People’s Republic of China and scores of other countries, and of course, Covid.

A discussion of the invasion of Ukraine will have to wait for the next edition, and one wishes there was more about Vladimir Putin in this book than the comment that neither he nor Xi show signs of disappearing from the scene anytime soon. Brown does, however, have plenty to say about other events making global headlines, especially the pandemic, which has gone from seeming likely to undermine Xi’s position to serving to strengthen it. In Brown’s words, as a tightly controlled media plays up pandemic governance failures in other parts of the world, and hides or plays down domestic missteps, Covid has “provided the fuel by which Chinese nationalism has been turbo-charged” – and this is important to Xi since, as the author rightly stresses throughout the book, he is motivated above all by a fierce patriotism and a strong desire to see the Chinese Communist party (CCP) stay in power. News of staggering death tolls in Europe and the US have been presented as “positive proof that socialism with Chinese characteristics” can “perform better than western capitalism” in a crisis.

It is curious that it has taken so long for an accessible English-language biography of Xi like this to come out. Among the reasons is the fact that neither he nor anyone in his inner circle gives interviews, and it is not even clear who exactly is in his inner circle. There are no candid tell-all memoirs by him or people close to him to offer insights.

As a result, this book is a valuable primer for anyone looking to get up to speed on how Xi achieved power (largely by inheriting and cultivating an unusually wide array of connections to members of different wings of the CCP elite) and what he has done with it in political terms. But it is less compelling as a window on to the private man, who remains an enigma. And while Brown does not shy away from mentioning the dark sides of Xi’s reign – and there are many, from horrific human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet , to the strangling of civil liberties in Hong Kong , and the clampdown on critical intellectuals and journalists in Beijing – one feels the emphasis on these could be stronger.

Sometimes, Brown falls into the trap of implying that what is good for the CCP is good for the country and its people, and makes a prediction that he presumably found himself wishing he could alter as the harsh Shanghai lockdown began to make headlines around the world. “Even in the depths of 2022, with no immediate end in sight for the Covid-19 pandemic,” he writes late in the book, “my faith in China, under Xi or whoever replaces him, being able to surmount the formidable challenges facing it, and creating its own unique version of modernity, is still strong. And what a world it might be, where the whole of China buzzes with the energy and life of the great city of Shanghai.”

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• About Xi Jinping

The following is the biographical sketch of Xi Jinping :

Xi Jinping, born in June 1953, is a male ethnic Han from Fuping , Shaanxi Province. He entered the workforce in January 1969 and joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) in January 1974. He graduated from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua University with a major in Marxist theory and ideological and political education, has an in-service postgraduate education and holds the degree of Doctor of Laws.

He is currently general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission, vice president of the People's Republic of China (PRC), vice chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission, and president of the Central Party School.

1969-1975 Educated youth and Party Branch secretary, Liangjiahe Brigade, Wen'anyi Commune, Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province

1975-1979 Student of basic organic synthesis, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University

1979-1982 Secretary, General Office, State Council and Central Military Commission (AD)

1982-1983 Deputy secretary, CPC Zhengding County Committee, Hebei Province

1983-1985 Secretary, CPC Zhengding County Committee, Hebei Province; concurrently first commissar and Party Committee first secretary, Zhengding County Military Affairs Department

1985-1988 Member, Standing Committee, CPC Xiamen Municipal Committee, Fujian Province; and vice mayor, Xiamen

1988-1990 Secretary, CPC Ningde Prefectural Committee, Fujian Province; and concurrently first secretary, Party Committee, Ningde Military Sub-region

1990-1993 Secretary, CPC Fuzhou Municipal Committee, Fujian Province; chairman, Standing Committee, Fuzhou Municipal People's Congress; and concurrently first secretary, Party Committee, Fuzhou Military Sub-region

1993-1995 Member, Standing Committee, CPC Fujian Provincial Committee; secretary, CPC Fuzhou Municipal Committee; chairman, Standing Committee, Fuzhou Municipal People's Congress; first secretary, Party Committee, Fuzhou Military Sub-region

1995-1996 Deputy secretary, CPC Fujian Provincial Committee; secretary, CPC Fuzhou Municipal Committee; chairman, Standing Committee, Fuzhou Municipal People's Congress; first secretary, Party Committee, Fuzhou Military Sub-region

1996-1999 Deputy secretary, CPC Fujian Provincial Committee; first commissar, Fujian Provincial Antiaircraft Artillery Reserve Division

1999-2000 Deputy secretary, CPC Fujian Provincial Committee; acting governor, Fujian Province; deputy director, National Defense Mobilization Committee, Nanjing Military Area Command; director, Fujian Provincial National Defense Mobilization Committee; first commissar, Fujian Provincial Antiaircraft Artillery Reserve Division

2000-2002 Deputy secretary, CPC Fujian Provincial Committee; governor, Fujian Province; deputy director, National Defense Mobilization Committee, Nanjing Military Area Command; director, Fujian Provincial National Defense Mobilization Committee; first commissar, Fujian Provincial Antiaircraft Artillery Reserve Division (1998-2002: studied Marxist theory and ideological and political education in the In-service Postgraduate Class at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, and awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws)

2002-2002 Deputy secretary, CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee; acting governor, Zhejiang Province; deputy director, National Defense Mobilization Committee, Nanjing Military Area Command; director, Zhejiang Provincial National Defense Mobilization Committee

2002-2003 Secretary, CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee; acting governor, Zhejiang Province; first secretary, Party Committee, Zhejiang Provincial Military Region; deputy director, National Defense Mobilization Committee, Nanjing Military Area Command; director, Zhejiang Provincial National Defense Mobilization Committee

2003-2007 Secretary, CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee; chairman, Standing Committee, Zhejiang Provincial People's Congress; first secretary, Party Committee, Zhejiang Provincial Military Region

2007-2007 Secretary, CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee; first secretary, Party Committee, Shanghai Garrison Command

2007-2008 Member, Standing Committee, Political Bureau; and member, Secretariat; of the CPC Central Committee; president, Central Party School

2008-2010 Member, Standing Committee, Political Bureau; and member, Secretariat; of the CPC Central Committee; vice president, PRC; president, Central Party School

2010-2012 Member, Standing Committee, Political Bureau; and member, Secretariat; of the CPC Central Committee; vice president, PRC; vice chairman, CPC and PRC Central Military Commission; president, Central Party School

2012- General secretary, CPC Central Committee; chairman, CPC Central Military Commission; vice president, PRC; vice chairman, PRC Central Military Commission; president, Central Party School

Alternate member, Fifteenth CPC Central Committee; member, Sixteenth through Eighteenth CPC Central Committees; member, Political Bureau and its Standing Committee, and Secretariat, Seventeenth CPC Central Committee; member, Political Bureau and its Standing Committee, and general secretary, Eighteenth CPC Central Committee; elected as vice president of the PRC at the First Session of the Eleventh National People's Congress ( NPC ); appointed as a vice chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth CPC Central Committee; appointed as a vice chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission at the Seventeenth Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Eleventh NPC; appointed as chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission at the First Plenary Session of the Eighteenth CPC Central Committee.

(source: Xinhua)

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Profile: Xi Jinping and his era

Xi Jinping delivers a report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 18, 2017. [Photo: Xinhua]

CPC CORE FORGED DURING "GREAT STRUGGLE"

When Xi assumed office five years ago, his top priority was to ensure that the whole Party shall obey the Central Committee and uphold its authority and its centralized, unified leadership. The Party had to face up to its lack of drive, incompetence, disengagement from the people, inaction, and corruption. Of those failings, corruption became the biggest challenge. In Xi's opinion, if corruption got any worse, it would cause the collapse of the Party and the fall of the state. Achieving any target in the new era would be impossible.

The campaign against corruption was like no other in the 96-year CPC history, and remains as far-reaching and relentless as any such campaign anywhere in the world. One of the first "tigers" -- senior corrupt officials -- to fall was Li Chuncheng, former deputy secretary of the CPC Sichuan provincial committee. He had served as an alternate member of 18th CPC Central Committee for less than a month when he was put under investigation in December 2012. Soon, probes of centrally administered officials became an almost regular occurrence. Once as many as seven "tigers" fell under the gaze of investigators in a single month.

Even though the public had witnessed the full force of the campaign, the announcement in July 2014 that Zhou Yongkang, former member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, was under investigation came as a bolt from the blue. Previously, Chinese people had doubted that the CPC would investigate officials at such a high level. The international community had not expected that Xi, still quite new to his office, had the capability or resolve to take out such a "big tiger."

Over the past five years, a number of officials with "iron hats" -- those who were considered powerful and not easily removed -- have been felled for corruption. Besides Zhou Yongkang, there were Bo Xilai, Guo Boxiong, Xu Caihou, Sun Zhengcai and Ling Jihua. A total of 43 members and alternate members of the 18th CPC Central Committee as well as nine members of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) have been investigated.

Dispelling any doubt, Xi said, "If we did not offend hundreds of corrupt officials, we would offend 1.3 billion Chinese people." To those who worried that corruption would impede economic development, Xi said, "As far as I see, the sky will not fall."

Xi's path has been far from smooth. Rather, it is one of "struggle," a word which appeared 23 times in his report to the 19th CPC National Congress.

In 2015, the anti-corruption drive was described as at "a stalemate." In 2016, the CPC was "gaining ground to overcome corruption." Today, the anti-corruption campaign has built into a crushing tide, is being consolidated, and continues to develop. Fugitives overseas have found themselves hunted down and captured. Domestically, thousands of officials confessed to disciplinary authorities on their own initiative.

While some suggested taking a breather as long as some progress has been made, Xi said the Party must not leave well enough alone in front of an early harvest. Rather, the Party must fight for a "sweeping victory" over corruption. A popular cartoon on the Internet shows Xi on top of a tiger and punching the beast with his fist.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, about 75 percent of Chinese people were satisfied with the anti-corruption efforts in 2012. The figure had risen to 92.9 percent by 2016.

Xi does not only rely on taking out "tigers" and swatting "flies" -- low-level corrupt officials -- to win people's support.

In early 2013, when Xi read an article, "Netizens call for curbing food waste" carried by Xinhua News Agency, he gave the instruction that "waste must be stopped." He stressed eradicating waste in public funds. After five years of hard work, the CPC checked the unhealthy trend, a mission once believed to be impossible.

Yang Xiaodu, deputy secretary of the CCDI, declared: "People said public funds spent on recreational activities like dinners and drinking could be about 200 billion yuan every year, but no one knew how to curtail it. With the eight-point regulation on frugality, the problem has been solved."

The regulation made explicit requirements on how officials should improve their work in eight aspects, focusing on rejecting extravagance and reducing bureaucratic meetings and empty talk.

"The eight-point regulation has changed China," Yang said.

"The people have granted power to us, so we must devote our lives to the Party and the country, and serve the Party and the country worthily. We must do what we should. If our work needs us to offend some people, we must offend them," Xi said.

Xi meant what he said. He relaunched the mass-line campaign to bring Party officials closer to the people. He urged officials to meet "strict" and "earnest" requirements: to be strict with oneself in practicing self-cultivation, using power, and exercising self-discipline; and to be earnest in one's thinking, work, and behavior. The Party required all its members to have a solid understanding of the Party Constitution, Party regulations, and major policy addresses, and to meet Party standards of behavior.

The CPC will run a campaign on "staying true to our founding mission" to enable all the Party members to arm themselves with new Party theories and become more purposeful in working tirelessly to accomplish the historic Party mission.

The Party has revised its regulations on disciplinary punishments and code on honesty and self-discipline. Those keen on officialdom are losing power and influence. Over the past five years, more than 5,000 "naked officials"-- those whose spouses and children are overseas -- have been removed from their posts. More than 22,000 officials at or above county-level had their posts rearranged on the basis of their performance.

Xi's status as the core of the CPC Central Committee and the whole Party was endorsed at the sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee. It is widely acknowledged that when such a big Party as the CPC governs such a big country, difficulties are inevitable. Without a strong core of leadership, it is hard to maintain unity of Party thinking and solidarity across the entire nation. Weak leadership makes any achievement impossible, not to mention victory in a "great struggle with many new contemporary features."

Xi's indomitable spirit originates from his faith in Marxism. One of his colleagues noted in an article that Xi's speeches "exuberate with firm belief in communism and socialism."

When visiting "The Road Toward Renewal" exhibition at the National Museum on Nov. 29, 2012, Xi told a story about Chen Wangdao, who was so focused on translating The Communist Manifesto that he found himself eating ink instead of brown sugar. Xi quoted Chen's words: "The taste of truth is so sweet."

Xi also draws strength from his parents Xi Zhongxun and Qi Xin, both of whom participated in the revolution at young ages. In 1962, Xi Zhongxun's 16 years of suffering from political persecution began. However, he never gave in to adversity and ultimately helped clear the names of others who were persecuted.

When his father was wronged, Xi Jinping went through some tough times.

In one of his letters to his father, Xi Jinping noted that even when trapped in hard times, Xi Zhongxun still held "unswerving faith in communism and belief in the Party's greatness, correctness and glory."

"Your words and actions have pointed the correct direction for us to go forward," he wrote.

Xi also recollected that, when he was five or six years old, his mother bought him picture books about Yue Fei, a patriotic military commander of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), and the story of how Yue's mother tattooed four Chinese characters on his back to remind him of devoting himself to the country.

"Jing Zhong Bao Guo (To serve the country with total loyalty): I have long remembered these four characters. It is the pursuit of my entire life," Xi said.

During his early life, Xi applied to join the Communist Youth League eight times and the CPC 10 times, before he finally joined the Party at the age of 20. 

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China's Xi Jinping to meet with American executives on Wednesday, sources say

• Xi to meet with U.S. executives in Beijing, sources say
• Meeting follows November dinner in San Francisco

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Reporting by Joe Cash and Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Sonali Paul

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Thomson Reuters

Joe Cash reports on China’s economic affairs, covering domestic fiscal and monetary policy, key economic indicators, trade relations, and China’s growing engagement with developing countries. Before joining Reuters, he worked on UK and EU trade policy across the Asia-Pacific region. Joe studied Chinese at the University of Oxford and is a Mandarin speaker.

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Blackstone, Qualcomm CEOs Meet Xi Jinping In Beijing Amid US-China Trade Tensions

C hinese President Xi Jinping met with a group of American business executives in Beijing on Wednesday as his government attempts to boost overseas investment in the country amid ongoing geopolitical and trade tensions between China and the U.S.

Chipmaker Qualcomm’s boss Cristiano Amon, Blackstone Group chief Stephen Schwarzman, insurer Chubb’s Evan Greenberg and FedEx’s Raj Subramaniam were among the CEOs who attended.

According to Chinese state media, Xi welcomed the leaders by talking about the “history of friendly exchanges” between the people of the U.S. and China and expressed hope for more common ground and consensus.

Reuters reported that leaders from around 20 companies were invited to the gathering and the meeting with the Chinese President lasted around 90 minutes.

The meeting is taking place on the sidelines of the China Development Forum—the country’s flagship annual business gathering—and is reportedly a follow-up of a special dinner meeting Xi had with U.S. executives during his visit to San Francisco last year.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was at the China Development Forum, did not attend Wednesday. Cook visited the country last week and attended the launch of a new flagship Apple store in Shanghai. The visit was seen as part of a public relations charm offensive by the tech giant’s CEO as iPhone sales face a steep slump in China—a critical market for the company. Later during his visit, Cook pledged fresh investment into the country and hailed its “vibrant” and “dynamic” economy.

5%. That is China’s annual growth target for the ongoing fiscal year, a goal which analysts and economists say is very ambitious.

Key Background

Late last year, Xi met with President Joe Biden in San Francisco on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the city. The meeting was an effort to simmer down tensions between the two countries and was deemed fruitful. During his visit, Xi attended a special dinner where several top U.S. executives, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Cook, were present. The Chinese leader received a standing ovation at the dinner and said “China is ready to be a partner and friend of the US.” Trade tensions between Beijing and Washington continue to remain and the issue came to the fore earlier this week when China filed a complaint against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization. The complaint alleges the Biden administration’s new rules on electric vehicle subsidies are discriminatory. Beijing has also publicly pushed back against Congress’ legislative efforts to force Beijing-based ByteDance to sell the social media platform TikTok.

Further Reading

Xi Meets US CEOs, Seeking to Boost Confidence in China’s Economy (Bloomberg)