Can he outshine his dad?
If Xi Jinping had followed the example of his immediate predecessors, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Nineteenth Congress in October 2017 should have marked the halfway point of his time in power. After completing his first five-year term as general secretary, he would have elevated his preferred successor and signalled the beginning of an orderly transition to the next leader in 2022.
This is not what happened. Not only was there no designated heir, but the conclave voted unanimously to enshrine Xi’s political ideology, Xi Jinping Thought, in the party’s constitution, an honour previously reserved for Mao Zedong. (Deng Xiaoping was posthumously credited with developing a “Theory”.) It was the clearest indication yet of Xi’s increasing dominance within the party and his determination to rule China indefinitely. In March 2018, the country’s legislature removed the term limits on the presidency, the only constitutional bar to Xi remaining in power for life. Katie Stallard, New Statesman.
Katie’s a Westerner whose explanation makes sense to us Westerners. A more Chinese explanation might go like this..
Xi is a second-generation politician, son and heir to one of the most admired men in history, Xi Zhongxun. A combat army general in his teens and ‘the best mediator in Chinese history,’ said Mao, who compared him favorably to historically celebrated mediators in China, where arbitration is an art, admired as much as calligraphy.
After seven years under house for obstructing the Cultural Revolution1 Zhongxun was assigned to Guangdong Province, where millions of people were swimming, tunneling, wire-cutting and bribing their way into Hong Kong, whose economy was red hot. Zhongxun solved the problem by building an exclusive economic zone, EEZ, on a mudflat behind a fishing village, Shenzen2, whose economy now exceeds most countries’. Forbidding his other sons from going into government, he took Jinping along, to show him how it’s done. He died as he had lived, penniless.
Honor thy father
Xi honors him by demonstrating that he had learned well from his great father. He has doubled everyone’s real incomes, ended poverty, housed 96% of Chinese in their own homes and now has the baddies on the run. Corruption, he said, “destroys more countries than armies”. He will soon open the first city built from scratch in the 21st century, incorporating 21st century technology in order to make everyone’s life 50% chiller and sufficiently more productive to repay the construction cost. And he’s building a new canal, longer than any in history save the Grand Canal itself.
That influences history. In a good way. We need a leader like Xi
While Zhongxun was in prison his son grew to manhood in the country’s poorest village. Authorities were reluctant to grant him admission to Tsinghua University, so he demonstrated his good faith by raising the villagers’ quality of life, building the villagers’ first sewer/methane generator – from plans his mother sent – and doubling everyone’s incomes. He was finally admitted.
Shenzen’s incomes and quality of life now surpass Hong Kong’s, where there is a long waiting list for visitors’ visas.
