Xi Jinping sat quietly, looking both severe and indifferent as he turned his gaze away from his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who was arguing with security guards before being escorted out of the Great Hall of the People at the opening of the Communist Party’s 20th Congress in October 2022. A heavy silence hung over a hall dominated by vast red flags, only shattered by the clicking of journalists’ cameras.
Every element of the scene had been prepared with precision, dense with symbolism. The congress, which would confirm Xi as the first leader since Mao Zedong to serve a third term as general secretary of the party, was intended to draw the formal curtain on the era of collective leadership and executive general-secretaries. Yet the congress itself was less a decisive turning point than a symbolic event.
Xi had already governed for two presidential terms, during which he concentrated power in his own hands. His thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics had been written into the party constitution, and the constitutional barrier to lifelong rule had been removed. When he was unexpectedly named in 2007 as the likely successor to Hu Jintao, Xi was not an obviously charismatic figure.
His record rested on accumulated administrative experience and a reputation as a relatively ‘clean’ man capable of confronting corruption, as well as an economic pragmatist able to deliver results within the rules of the system. Within party circles at the time, he was seen as a consensus figure acceptable to all. Yet a reading of his life suggests that he was gradually being prepared for high office, as part of a broader response to the challenges facing both party and state.
The Red Prince
Few outside China know that Xi is the first general secretary to belong to the class of ‘red princes’—the children of the first revolutionary generation that founded the People’s Republic of China. His father, Xi Zhongxun, held senior posts, including vice-premier of the State Council, first general secretary of the State Council, and head of the Central Propaganda Department. He also undertook sensitive missions in relations with the Soviet Union before and after the great split, as well as with North Korea.
Xi was born in 1953 and spent part of his childhood inside Zhongnanhai, the closed compound adjacent to the Forbidden City where the top leaders live. There, he was educated in schools reserved for the children of senior officials, in what resembled a sealed space for the creation of an elite. Then came the rupture.
In the atmosphere that followed the failure of the ‘Great Leap Forward,’ and as the turbulence that would later lead to the Cultural Revolution gathered force, his father fell into political disgrace after accusations linked to his approval of a literary work deemed sensitive towards Mao. With the onset of the Cultural Revolution, the family fell apart. According to some accounts, his half-sister committed suicide under the weight of pressure, while his mother, Qi Xin, a communist activist, was publicly humiliated.
Xi himself, at the age of 15, became one of 18 million young Chinese sent to the countryside to “go up to the mountains and down to the villages”. In the village of Liangjiahe, in Shaanxi province, amidst yaodong cave dwellings carved into the mountains, he experienced gruelling agricultural labour, merciless mosquitoes, scarce food, and a complete severance from any formal educational path. He formed an emotional bond with peasants and the lower classes, and came to know China from its roots, a knowledge acquired through hardship. It was the start of an “obsession” with political stability that would later become one of the defining features of his rule.
China changes
During the seven years he spent in the countryside, Xi’s application to join the party was rejected eight times before he was finally accepted and became secretary of the village party branch. In 1975, he returned to Beijing to enrol at Tsinghua University. By then, Xi’s fate had become inseparable from China’s own transformation. Mao died in 1976. Two years later, Deng Xiaoping emerged as the country’s de facto leader, opening the way for reform and for Xi’s father’s full return to the heart of power.
By the 1980s, Xi Zhongxun had assumed the highest political post in Guangdong province, China’s gateway to the capitalist world, where he oversaw the experiment of the special economic zones in Shenzhen and Zhuhai. From this, Xi learned that the market was not an adversary but an instrument, and that partnership with the private sector was unavoidable, provided it was conditioned by political control.
