Xi Jinping: the Making of a Dictator (The Economist)
Images: During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards beat, tortured and killed anyone they saw as an enemy. Many members of the party elite, including Xi Jinping’s father, were publicly denounced in the Cultural Revolution. Students relied on public notices to find out which leaders were no longer in favour. Like many educated youths, Xi was sent to the countryside in the 1960s. In 1985 Xi spent two weeks in America with a Chinese delegation. (uncredited)
He likes football, claims to swim 1,000 metres a day and is a fan of “Sleepless in Seattle”, “The Godfather” and “Saving Private Ryan”. These are among the short, carefully choreographed list of details we know about the world’s most powerful man. Beyond a veneer of openness – he carries his own umbrella, shuns suits for anoraks, pays for his own meal at a dumpling shop – he is an enigma. Leaders of the world’s most influential countries go on tv to debate their rivals and are interrogated in interviews about the minutiae of their policy statements; the comings and goings of their ministers are documented by a gleeful media. Yet even Xi’s speeches are often released only months or years after the event. His advisers are just as remote; sometimes we don’t even know their names.
We have far more detail on his official backstory – the hardships he suffered when, along with millions of other urban Chinese, he spent years toiling in the countryside in a remote village in the 1960s. These fables tell us how Xi wants to be seen: a man who withstood great pain before rising to his rightful place in the highest office. Read more:
