Xi Jinping and the Lessons of Childhood
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has emerged as one of the globe’s most influential political superpowers. With the world’s largest economy, population, and military, China is starting to dominate the international political stage. With the PRC’s new-found eminence, it becomes increasingly important to understand the intentions of the man at the helm of this superpower’s metaphorical ship -- China’s president Xi Jinping. By examining key events from Xi’s childhood, one can see the forces that shaped the political strategies that Xi is following today.
Xi Jinping was born on June 15, 1953 to a wealthy and politically influential family in Shaanxi Province, China. His father, Xi Zhongxun, served as an officer in the Chinese military in the second Sino-Japanese war, which brought the Communist party to power in 1937. After this military success, and around the time that young Xi Jinping and his three other siblings were born, Zhongxun was given a prominent position in the Communist government’s Propaganda Ministry under Chairman Mao Zedong. While Xi’s early childhood was truly privileged compared to the majority of Chinese citizens, the unstable political circumstances that ultimately led to China’s Cultural Revolution in 1966 caused his father to fall out of favor with the Communist Party. Zhongxun’s political fallout led to him being publicly shamed and, ultimately, imprisoned - leaving his family to fend for itself.
With the absence of their father, the Jinping family began to fall apart. Xi’s sister unexpectedly died, under circumstances which many believe to be suicide. This shocking turn of events devastated the Jinping family and created even more tension in an already tumultuous situation. Shortly after, at the age of fifteen, Xi was paraded around his town by Mao Zedong’s Red Guards as an “enemy of the public,” and even his mother was forced to publicly denounce him. Furthermore, because the family no longer held political favour with the Communist party, they were exiled to Liangjiahe: a rural province in Eastern China. Xi chooses to fondly refer to this period of exile in the small village of Liangjiahe as his “second home,” however, his life there was hardly easy. While in Liangjiahe, Xi lived in a cave and worked manual labour jobs - pushing carts of sand, tending to crops, and building dams with the locals. Although he briefly managed to escape to Beijing during this period, he was soon discovered by his mother, who reported him to the authorities. Xi was arrested and returned back to the countryside where he was forced to dig ditches.
While Xi’s desperate childhood experience gave him ample cause to resent the government that forced these conditions upon him, Xi’s time in the countryside ironically cemented his allegiance to the Communist ideology. Rather than seeing his treatment as “punishment,” Xi describes his experience as a “farmer” in Liangjiahe as “enlightening.” He claims that the hardship he experienced allowed him to understand the suffering of ordinary Chinese people which, in turn, molded him into the leader he would eventually become - a champion of the common man.
As time went on, Xi continued to show support for Mao Zedong, despite Chairman Mao having had turned against him and his family. He “learned to revere strict order and abhor challenges to hierarchy” from the Communist Party. This unwavering commitment to the party served to reestablish his credibility with the government, allowing him to regain favour with the party leadership. Xi attended Beijing’s Tsinghua University as a chemical engineering student and in 2002 was elected to China’s Central Committee (CCP). During his time in the Central Committee he worked hard, impressed senior members, and still maintained his persona as a ‘man of the people.’ Xi’s hard work and strict adherence to party dogma got him elected to the Central Committee’s Politburo in 2007. In 2012, it earned him China’s premiership. When asked why the Communist Party remains so important to him Xi says, with no hint of irony, that it exists “to lead people to a happy life.”
Xi Jinping’s childhood trauma bears little resemblance to the ‘happy life’ he chooses to share with the Chinese people. His adherence to economic nationalism is unwavering; his paranoia about state enemies has led him to implement unprecedented surveillance of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens; and his dogmatic embrace of the Communist Party, has dashed all Western hopes that China’s embrace of capitalism would eventually bring about democratic reforms. Rather than rebelling against those who banished his family to Liangjiahe he has assimilated and doubled down on the values of those who banished him. Xi’s perseverance through the hardship of his adolescence taught him how best to do to others what was done to him. Perhaps the millions of protesters taking to the streets in Hong Kong will force Xi to reexamine lessons from his childhood.
