Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping is a Chinese politician serving as the general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). Xi has been the paramount leader, the highest-ranking official in China, since 2012 and he officially received the title of “leadership core” from the CPC in 2016.

The son of Chinese Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, he was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father’s purge during the Cultural Revolution, and lived in a cave in the village of Liangjiahe, where he worked as the party secretary. After studying at the Tsinghua University as a “Worker-Peasant-Soldier student”, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China’s coastal provinces. Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002. He was also governor, then party secretary of neighbouring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. Following the dismissal of the party secretary of Shanghai Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to replace him for a brief period in 2007. He joined the Politburo Standing Committee and central secretariat in October 2007, spending the next five years as Chinese paramount leader Hu Jintao’s presumed successor. Xi was vice president from 2008 to 2013 and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission from 2010 to 2012.

Xi is the first general secretary born after the Second World War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Since assuming power, Xi has introduced far-ranging measures to enforce party discipline and to ensure internal unity. His signature anti-corruption campaign has led to the downfall of prominent incumbent and retired Communist Party officials, including members of the Politburo Standing Committee. A Chinese nationalist, he has tightened restrictions over civil society and ideological discourse by increasing of censorship and mass surveillance, advocating internet censorship in China as the concept of “internet sovereignty”. Xi has called for further socialist market economic reforms, for governing according to the law and for strengthening legal institutions, with an emphasis on individual and national aspirations under the slogan “Chinese Dream”. He has also championed a more assertive foreign policy, particularly with regard to China–Japan relations, China’s claims in the South China Sea, and its role as a leading advocate of free trade and globalization. He has sought to expand China’s African and Eurasian influence through the Belt and Road Initiative.

As the central figure of the fifth generation of leadership of the People’s Republic, Xi has significantly centralised institutional power by taking on a wide range of leadership positions, including chairing the newly formed National Security Commission, as well as new steering committees on economic and social reforms, military restructuring and modernization, and the Internet. Xi’s political thoughts have been written into the party and state constitutions. His tenure has also seen a return to a cult of personality and the removal of term limits for the presidency in 2018.