Why Xi Jinping is nothing like he really seems to the West | CPT PPP Coverage

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‘Corruption is a cancer of society,’ he told top Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) officials in 2013. ‘If the scourge of corruption worsens, eventually the party and the nation will be ruined.’

Xi has kept up his long-running disciplinary crackdowns this year, allegedly purging corrupt and negligent officials across China’s medical, finance and sports industries, among others, and even some of the very enforcers tasked to police party discipline.

But myth making has been an equally important component of Xi’s push for preeminence – his public image is clearly a priority.

‘I have many hobbies, the biggest of which is reading. Reading has become a way of life for me,’ Xi told reporters in 2013, weeks after becoming President, after name-checking eight Russian writers – including Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy – whose works he claimed to have read.

Two months later, Xi charmed Greece’s Prime Minister by saying he read many works by Greek philosophers during his teenage years. When Xi visited France the following year, he boasted about reading Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Sartre, and more than a dozen other writers. State media feted Xi as an erudite leader, publishing lists of his favourite books and cajoling citizens to emulate his love for learning.

The publicity blitz set tongues wagging among Xi’s fellow ‘princelings’, as descendants of revolutionary leaders and senior officials are known. Many among them concluded that Xi’s outlandish claims of literary prowess betrayed deep-seated insecurity about his lack of a formal education – particularly in contrast with Mao, who wrote poetry.

‘Xi is not cultured. He was basically just an elementary schooler,’ one princeling who has known Xi for decades told me. ‘He’s very sensitive about that.’

Few people, if anyone, and possibly not even Xi himself, know how long he wants to stay in power. Nor has he made clear if, when or how he would designate an heir. Xi may have a timeline in mind, but changing circumstances could force him to rethink those plans. The uncertainty keeps the party elite on their toes, helping Xi maintain control and buying him time to assess potential successors.

Since becoming party chief in 2012, Xi has accrued personal clout to a degree unseen since Mao. He designated himself the party’s ‘core’ leader and greatest living theorist, ensuring that he would remain China’s preeminent politician until he passes on, or as party insiders say, ‘goes to see Marx’. He scrapped term limits on the presidency, and upended retirement norms honed by his predecessors – obliterating the most important political reforms of the post-Mao era.