Yet what do we know about the man himself? He is
unpopular among the intelligentsia. Some of the elite
whisper that he is not very bright, that he lacks polish
and failed to get a top-grade education. Yet millions of
Chinese citizens, including students in Hong Kong
and Muslims in “re-education” centres in the Xinjiang
autonomous region, must now study “Xi Jinping
Thought”, a wordy manifesto for “socialism with
Chinese characteristics” compiled by his ghost writers.
For one thing he is an operator. He is at the top of
the sharpest pyramid in politics. The Communist
Party of China has about 95 million members. Only
205 of them are full members of the central
committee. Twenty-four men and just one woman sit
on its political bureau, better known as the politburo,
and only seven of them — all men — are on the
politburo standing committee. This is the body that
rules China. Xi is its boss. He is also president — a
largely ceremonial title — and commander of the
armed forces. He secured all three crowns for himself
within months of taking power. At 68 he needs to
build a bigger fortress than any of his predecessors
— he may, after all, live to a great age and he cannot
risk leaving power. But how did he get there?BORN INTO THE RED ARISTOCRACY
Xi Jinping was born in 1953 into privilege as a member
of the “red aristocracy” and spent his early years in
the exclusive leadership compounds in Beijing. His
father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revolutionary guerrilla
commander. His mother, Qi Xin, joined the cause
during the 1930s and became a Marxist educator. It
was her first marriage, her husband’s second. The
couple had four children, two daughters and two sons.
Xi Jinping was their third child and the elder son.Xi’s mother, now 95, is still a defining presence in
his life. “As a filial son, Xi takes walks and chats with
his mother, holding her hand,” an official biography
states. The two dine from time to time. “He sees her
as a living heritage, a link to the past,” says a source
who grew up in the same circles. Such words fit the
roseate propaganda pumped out in a ceaseless stream
of films, documentaries and exhibitions. Reality is
different from these flickering black-and-white images
because in China the past is a place of horrors.
Qi Xin may have been the tenderest of mothers
— who knows? — but she taught survival skills to
her son as part of his lineage. The women at the top
of revolutionary China had to prove themselves as
pitiless as any other comrade. They were cadres as
well as partners. Some had affairs with each other’s
spouses. Politics and the family were synthesised.
Cruelty was the coinage of everyday life; neighbours
could be exalted one moment and broken the next.
The family survived travails that would have
hardened any heart. Xi’s father rose to high office in
the “New China”, but in 1962 one of Mao’s routine
purges tossed him out. Then the Cultural Revolution
of 1966 threw China into a decade of chaos. The
record is blurred, but Xi Zhongxun was either in
detention or provincial exile throughout the period.
It was not always arduous, for he later told a British
governor of Hong Kong, Murray MacLehose, that he
had time to read translations of the works of Adam
Smith and the wartime histories of Winston
Churchill. He was brought back to favour by Mao’s
successor, Deng Xiaoping, in 1978, and given his last
big job, to open up the economy of southern China.
Some who knew him say that Xi Zhongxun, like
PREVIOUS PAGES: AP. THESE PAGES: REX, GETTY IMAGES others scarred in the cycle of revolutions, was
His father
rose to high
office in
the “New
China”, but
in 1962 one
of Mao’s
routine
purges
tossed
him out
Left: Xi Jinping in rural Shaanxi
province, where he worked as a
labourer from the age of 16.
Below, from left: Xi Jinping and
his younger brother, Xi Yuanping,
with their father, Xi ZhongxunThe Sunday Times Magazine • 25