Who Is Xi? Andrew J. Nathan

More than halfway through his five- Xi Jinping of an “all- under- heaven,” a vast world year term as president of China and that their fathers conquered under general secretary of the Chinese Com- Mao’s leadership. Their parents came munist Party—expected to be the first from poor rural villages and rose to of at least two—Xi Jinping’s widening rule an empire. The second generation crackdown on civil society and promo- is privileged to live in a country that has tion of a cult of personality have disap- “stood up” and is globally respected pointed many observers, both Chinese and feared. They do not propose to be and foreign, who saw him as destined the generation that “loses the empire.” by family heritage and life experience It is this logic that drives Liu Yuan, to be a liberal reformer. Many thought the son of former president Liu Shaoqi, Xi must have come to understand the whom Mao purged and sent to a mis- dangers of Party dictatorship from the erable death, to support Xi in reviving experiences of his family under Mao’s Maoist ideas and symbolism; and the rule. His father, Xi Zhongxun (1913– same logic has moved the offspring of 2002), was almost executed in an inner- many of Mao’s other prominent victims Party conflict in 1935, was purged in to form groups that celebrate Mao’s another struggle in 1962, was “dragged legacy, like the Beijing Association of out” and tortured during the Cultural the Sons and Daughters of Yan’an and Revolution, and was eased into retire- the Beijing Association to Promote the ment after another Party confrontation Culture of the Founders of the Nation. in 1987. During the Cultural Revolu- The princelings seem to invest literal tion, one of Xi Jinping’s half- sisters biological meaning in the “bloodline was tormented to the point that she theory” of political purity that was committed suicide. Jinping himself, as popular among elite- offspring Red the offspring of a “capitalist roader,” Guards during the Cultural Revolu- was “sent down to the countryside” to tion: “If the father was a hero the son labor alongside the peasants. The hard- is a real man, if the father was a coun- ships were so daunting that he report- terrevolutionary the son is a bad egg” edly tried to escape, but was caught and (laozi yingxiong erzi haohan, laozi fan- sent back. dong erzi huaidan). They see no irony No wonder, then, that both father and in cheering Xi Jinping’s attack on cor- son showed a commitment to reformist rupt bureaucrats although Mao purged causes throughout their careers. Under their own fathers as “capitalist roaders Deng Xiaoping, the elder Xi pioneered in power.” Mao’s purges they excuse the open-door reforms in the southern as a mistake. But they see today’s bu- province of Guangdong and played an reaucrats as flocking to serve the Party important part in founding the Special because it is in power and not because Economic Zone of Shenzhen. In 1987 they inherited a spirit of revolutionary he stood alone among Politburo mem- sacrifice from their forebears. Such op- bers in refusing to vote for the purge of tected Xi by sending him to a job in a as Agnès Andrésy points out in her portunists are worms eating away at the liberal Party leader Hu Yaobang. provincial factory safely away from the book on Xi, form most of China’s top the legacy of revolution. The younger Xi made his career as an political storms in Beijing. When the leadership today as well as a large sec- The legacy is threatened by other unpretentious, pragmatic, pro- growth Cultural Revolution broke out a few tion of its business elite. Deng Xiaoping forces as well. Xi holds office at a time manager at first in the countryside and years later and Red Guards “dragged in 1981 declared that Mao’s contribu- when the regime has to confront a se- later in Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, out” Xi from this factory job to subject tions outweighed his errors by (in a ries of daunting challenges that have three of China’s provincial units that him to the physical abuse and denun- Chinese cliché) “a ratio of 7 to 3.” But all reached critical stages at once. It were most open to the outside world. ciation called “struggle,” the biography in practice Deng abandoned just about must manage a slowing economy; mol- In the final leg of his climb to power says that Mao’s premier Zhou Enlai everything Mao stood for. Contrary to lify millions of laid-off workers; shift he was chosen in preference to a rival had Xi imprisoned in a military bar- the Western consensus that Deng saved demand from export markets to do- leader, Bo Xilai, who had promoted racks near Beijing as a way of protect- the system after Mao nearly wrecked it, mestic consumption; whip underper- Cultural Revolution–style policies in ing him. These stories have doubtless Xi and many other red aristocrats feel forming giant state- owned enterprises the megacity of Chongqing. been massaged to show Mao as Xi that it was Deng who came close to de- into shape; dispel a huge overhang of For all these reasons, once Xi ac- wants him to be shown. But they are stroying Mao’s legacy. bad bank loans and nonperforming in- ceded to top office he was widely ex- grounded in historical reality and help Their reverence for Mao is different vestments; ameliorate climate change pected to pursue political liberalization to explain the complexity of Xi’s rela- from the simple nostalgia of former and environmental devastation that and market reform. Instead he has re- tionship to Mao’s legacy. As Xi said Red Guards and sent-down youth who are irritating the new middle class; and instated many of the most dangerous years later, “If Mao had not saved my hazily remember a period of adolescent downsize and upgrade the military. features of Mao’s rule: personal dicta- father’s life, I would not be here today.” idealism. Rather, as the pro- democracy Internationally, Chinese policymakers torship, enforced ideological confor- thinker Li Weidong writes in a much- see themselves as forced to respond mity, and arbitrary persecution. discussed online essay, “The ‘Road assertively to growing pressure from The key to this paradox is Xi’s seem- Xi’s respect for Mao is not a personal of Red Empire’ That Cannot Be Tra- the United States, Japan, and various ingly incongruous veneration of Mao. eccentricity. It is shared by many of the versed,” the children of the founding Southeast Asian regimes that are try- Xi’s view of Mao emerges in the offi- hereditary Communist aristocrats who, elite see themselves as the inheritors ing to resist China’s legitimate defense cial biography of his father compiled by of its interests in such places as Taiwan, Party scholars, whose first volume was the Senkaku islands, and the South published when Xi was close to achiev- BOOKS AND ARTICLES DRAWN ON FOR THIS ESSAY China Sea. ing supreme power and whose second came out after he had become Party Xi Zhongxun zhuan Zoubutong de general secretary and state president. [Biography of Xi Zhongxun] “hongse diguo zhilu” Any leader who confronts so many Describing the elder Xi’s near execu- by the Editorial Committee for [The “Road of Red Empire” big problems needs a lot of power, and tion in 1935, the book says that Mao the Biography of Xi Zhongxun. That Cannot Be Traversed] Mao provides a model of how such saved his life, ordering his release with Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian an article by Li Weidong. power can be wielded. Xi Jinping leads the remark that heads are not like scal- chubanshe, two volumes, Available at the Party, state, and military hierar- lions: if you cut them off they will not 1,283 pp. (2013) www.letscorp.net/archives/56290 chies by virtue of his chairmanship of grow back. Mao then promoted Xi’s ca- each. But his two immediate prede- reer as an official in Yan’an and as a top Xi Jinping: cessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, bureaucrat in Beijing after 1949. Red China, the Next Generation China’s Future exercised these roles within a system With respect to Xi’s purge in 1962, by Agnès Andrésy. by David Shambaugh. of collective leadership, in which each the biography blames Mao’s secret University Press of America, Polity, 203 pp., member of the Politburo Standing police chief, Kang Sheng, rather than 157 pp., $60.00 $59.95; $19.95 (paper) Committee took charge of a particu- Mao himself, and claims that Mao pro- lar policy or institution and guided it

8 The New York Review

Nathan_08_13.indd 8 4/14/16 10:37 AM without much interference from other or giving one. The propaganda agen- relationship appears to be boringly also to reaffirm its loyalty to the Party senior officials. cies labor to generate a huggable image conventional; even in rumor- drenched and to him personally. The overarching This model does not produce leader- of “Daddy Xi,” and Xi appears to be Beijing nothing has surfaced to suggest purpose of reform is to keep the Chi- ship sufficiently decisive to satisfy Xi genuinely popular among the public, that he is a sexual hedonist like Mao. nese Communist Party in power. and his supporters. So Xi has sidelined although this is changing as the econ- (Nor has the rumor mill produced al- Xi’s stated goal is for China to achieve the other members of the Politburo omy slows.3 But his anticorruption legations that Xi is personally corrupt, “a moderately prosperous society” Standing Committee, except for the campaign affecting a great many peo- although Bloomberg News found that (xiaokang shehui) by the hundredth propaganda chief Liu Yunshan and the ple has ground on, leading intellectual his older sister and her husband have anniversary of the Party’s founding in anticorruption watchdog Wang Qis- and official elites to read his expression made a lot of money.4) 2021, and “a socialist modernized soci- han. He has taken the chairmanship of as inscrutable and frightening. And Xi is no revolutionary. He seeks ety” (shehuizhuyi xiandaihua shehui) the most important seven of the twenty- Above all, Xi has followed Mao in neither to upend China nor to turn the by the hundredth anniversary of the two “leading small groups” that guide the demand for ideological confor- clock back to rural communes and the founding of the PRC in 2049. policy in specific areas. These include mity. He has invoked Mao’s “Talks at planned economy. Rather, he has de- These aims may sound modest, but the newly established Central Leading the Yan’an Forum on Literature and clared, it is forbidden to negate either of they are bold. The goal for 2049 is Group for Comprehensively Deepen- Art” in explaining why cultural said to imply a per capita GDP of ing Reform, which has removed man- and media workers must display US$30,000, and Chinese plan- agement of the economy from Premier “Party character” and serve as ners estimate that if it is achieved Li Keqiang. And Xi has created a Na- the Party’s “throat and tongue,” China will produce over 30 per- tional Security Council to coordinate and has used the resolution that cent of the world’s GDP in that internal security affairs. Mao wrote for the Party’s 1929 year, about one and a half times Xi emulates Mao in exercising power Gutian Conference to emphasize more than the proportion cur- through a tight circle of aides whom the importance of Party control rently produced by the United he can trust because they have dem- of the army. He has warned Party States. That would generate a onstrated their personal loyalty in members against “irresponsible great deal of global power. How- earlier phases of his career, such as Li talk” (wangyi) and academics ever, 2049 is still a long way off. Zhanshu, director of the all- powerful against “universal values.” As For now, Xi will not hesitate to General Office of the CCP Central David Shambaugh reports in his strike back if he believes the Committee. As the scholar Cheng Li recent book China’s Future: country’s “core interests” around reported in China Leadership Moni- its periphery are at stake, but Ai Weiwei/Private Collection/Ai Weiwei Studio tor, Li Zhanshu published an article in There has been an unremit- his priorities are fundamentally September 2014, stating that work as ting crackdown on all forms of domestic. an aide in formulating policy requires dissent and social activists; the “absolute loyalty” and that staff in the Internet and social media have General Office “should act and think been subjected to much tighter Xi has made himself in some in a manner highly consistent . . .with controls; Christian crosses and ways more powerful than Deng the order from the Central Committee churches are being demolished; or even Mao. Deng had the final led by General Secretary Xi Jinping.”1 Uighurs and Tibetans have been word on difficult policy issues, Xi’s protégés occupy crucial positions subject to ever- greater persecu- but he strove to avoid involve- in the bureaucracies responsible for se- tion; hundreds of rights law- ment in day- to- day policy, and curity, for supervising official careers, yers have been detained and when forced to make big deci- and for propaganda. Unlike powerful put on trial; public gatherings sions he first sought consensus staff members in recent previous ad- are restricted; a wide range of among a small group of senior ministrations, his aides avoid contact publications are censored; for- Ai Weiwei: Mao (Facing Forward), 1986; leaders. Mao was able to take any with foreigners and even with officials eign textbooks have been of- from the exhibition ‘Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei,’ decision he wanted regardless of outside Xi’s personal circle. ficially banned from university which originated at the National Gallery of Victoria, the will of his senior colleagues, Melbourne, and will be at the Andy Warhol Museum, Xi has also followed Mao’s model in classrooms; intellectuals are but he paid attention to only a Pittsburgh, June 4–August 28, 2016. The catalog protecting his rule against a coup. His under tight scrutiny; foreign is edited by Max Delany and Eric Shiner few issues at a time. Xi appears to anticorruption campaign has made and domestic NGOs have been and published by Yale University Press. be running the whole span of im- him numerous enemies, and there subjected to unprecedented portant policies on a daily basis, have been rumors of assassination at- governmental regulatory pres- without needing to consult senior tempts. However, as pointed out by sures and many have been forced the “two thirty years”—that is, Mao’s colleagues or retired elders. James Mulvenon and Cheng Li, respec- to leave China; attacks on “foreign era and then the post- Mao reform pe- He may go even further. There are tively, Xi has tightened direct control hostile forces” occur with regular- riod. China must combine Maoist firm- hints that he will seek to break the over the military by means of what is ity; and the “stability maintenance” ness with modernizing reform. recently established norm of two five- called a “[Central Military Commis- security apparatchiks have blan- The reform he has in mind, however, year terms in office and serve one or sion] Chairman Responsibility Sys- keted the country. . . . China is is different from what many observers, even more extra terms. He has had tem,” and he controls the central guard today more repressive than at any both Chinese and Western, would like. himself designated as the “core” of the corps—which monitors the security of time since the post- Tiananmen After his rise to power, the first policy leadership, a status that his immediate all the other leaders—through his long- 1989–1992 period. manifesto issued by his regime stated predecessor, Hu Jintao, did not take for time chief bodyguard, Wang Shaojun.2 that “markets should play the decisive himself. At this point in a leader’s first In these ways Xi controls the physical role in the allocation of resources,” but term we would expect to see one or two environment of the other leaders, just But Xi is different from Mao in im- it has become clear that market forces younger politicians emerging as po- as Mao did through his loyal follower portant ways. He has more accurate are intended as a tool to invigorate, tential heirs apparent, to be anointed Wang Dongxing. information than Mao did, thanks to rather than to kill off, the “national at next year’s nineteenth Party Con- Xi conveys Napoleonic self- extensive, organized, and professional champion” state- owned enterprises gress, but such signs are absent. One confidence in the importance of his systems of intelligence and analysis, and state financial institutions that of the rumors circulating in Beijing is mission and its inevitable success. In and thanks to what he has gathered continue to enjoy state patronage and that teams of editors are compiling a person he is said to be affable and re- during his travel at home and abroad. to make up a large part of the economy. book of Xi’s “thought” (sixiang), which laxed. But his carefully curated public He uses inner- Party star chambers Xi understands these as pillars of state would place him on a level with Mao as persona follows Mao in displaying a and charges of corruption rather than power and would never hand control a contributor to Sino- Marxist theory, stolid presence and immobile features screaming Red Guards and accusa- of the economy to enterprises that the a status not claimed by any of Mao’s that seem to convey either stoicism or tions of revisionism to purge rivals, Party does not control. other successors to date. implacability, depending on whether and the political police rather than a Xi wants “rule by law,” but this Xi’s concentration of power poses he is sitting through a boring speech mass movement to repress dissidents. means using the courts more energeti- great dangers for China. No one put Mao was a thinker and literary stylist; cally to carry out political repression it better than Deng Xiaoping, in a

1 Xi has banal ideas but is more deliber- and change the bureaucracy’s style of speech, “On the Reform of the System Cheng Li, “Xi Jinping’s Inner Circle ate and consistent in decision- making. work. He wants to reform the univer- of Party and State Leadership,” deliv- (Part 4: The Mishu Cluster I),” China His personal habits appear to be or- sities, not in order to create Western- ered on August 18, 1980: Leadership Monitor, No. 46 (Winter 2015). Additional footnotes appear in derly, compared to Mao’s chaotic ways style academic freedom but to bring the Web version of this essay at www of spending time. After a brief, failed academics and students to heel (in- Over- concentration of power is li- .nybooks.com. first marriage Xi settled down with cluding those studying abroad). He has able to give rise to arbitrary rule Peng Liyuan, a well-known singer who launched a thorough reorganization of by individuals at the expense of 2James Mulvenon, “The Yuan Stops made her career in the military. Their the military, which is intended partly collective leadership, and it is an Here: Xi Jinping and the ‘CMC Chairman Responsibility System,’” to make it more effective in battle, but important cause of bureaucracy and Cheng Li, “Xi Jinping’s Inner 3The term Xi Dada uses the character under the present circumstances. . . . Circle (Part 5: The Mishu Cluster II),” for “big” as in “Big-big Xi.” In various 4See “Xi Jinping Millionaire Relations There is a limit to anyone’s knowl- China Leadership Monitor, No. 47 dialects it means father, grandfather, or Reveal Fortunes of Elite,” Bloomberg edge, experience and energy. If a (Summer 2015). uncle Xi. News, June 29, 2012. person holds too many posts at the

10 The New York Review

Nathan_08_13.indd 10 4/14/16 10:37 AM same time, he will find it difficult and intellectual elites and within the to come to grips with the problems political leadership. By directing cor- in his work and, more important, ruption prosecutions at a retired Po- he will block the way for other litburo Standing Committee member, more suitable comrades to take up Zhou Yongkang, and retainers of other leading posts. retired senior officials, he has broken the rule that retired leaders are safe It was to avoid these problems that once they leave office, throwing into Deng built a system of tacit norms by question whether it can ever be safe for which senior leaders were limited to him to leave office. As he departs from two terms in office, members of the Deng’s path, he risks undermining the CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: Politburo Standing Committee divided adaptability and resilience that Deng’s THE HOLBERG PRIZE 2017 leadership roles among themselves, reforms painstakingly created for the and the senior leader made decisions post-Mao regime. The Holberg Board is inviting nominations for the Holberg Prize 2017. The Prize is in consultation with other leaders and As the members of the red aristoc- awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in retired elders. racy around Xi circle their wagons to the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The prize amount is NOK 4.5 By overturning Deng’s system, Xi is protect the regime, some citizens re- million (appr. GBP 380.000). hanging the survival of the regime on treat into religious observance or pri- his ability to bear an enormous work- vate consumption, others send their Nomination deadline: 15th June, 2016. load and not make big mistakes. He money and children abroad, and a seems to be scaring the mass media sense of impending crisis pervades so- 2016 HOLBERG LAUREATE and officials outside his immediate ciety. No wonder Xi’s regime behaves STEPHEN GREENBLATT circle from telling him the truth. He is as if it faces an existential threat. Given As an author, scholar and literature profes- trying to bottle up a growing diversity the power and resources that he com- sor, Stephen Greenblatt has been one of the of social and intellectual forces that mands, it would be reckless to predict most distinctive and influential voices in the are bound to grow stronger. He may that his attempt to consolidate authori- humanities for four decades. He is awarded be breaking down, rather than build- tarian rule will fail. But the attempt the Holberg Prize for his impact on the prac- ing up, the consensus about China’s risks creating the very political crisis tices of history, literary studies and cultural criticism. Greenblatt is regarded as one path of development among economic that it seeks to prevent. of the most important Shakespeare and Renaissance scholars of his generation. He is also the founder of New Historicism. The award will be conferred during a ceremony in Bergen, Norway, on 8th June.

PREVIOUS HOLBERG LAUREATES NEAR THE NEW WHITNEY 2015: Marina Warner 2009: Ian Hacking 2014: Michael Cook 2008: Fredric R. Jameson 2013: Bruno Latour 2007: Ronald Dworkin In the Meatpacking District, 2012: Manuel Castells 2006: Shmuel Eisenstadt Not far from the new Whitney, 2011: Jürgen Kocka 2005: Jürgen Habermas

Photo: Stephanie Mitchell 2010: Natalie Z. Davis 2004: Julia Kristeva In a charming restaurant, I showed how charming I can be. I showed how blue my eyes can be. www.holbergprisen.no/en I showed I can be Dante first catching sight of Beatrice.

The maître d’ was new to me. The sudden sight of her, so gently lovely, Threw me at the pressed-tin ceiling, where I stuck. I asked her where I was, her name was Emily. I don’t know who the ceiling was. I doubt pressed-tin was what it was.

Call for Fellows for 2017-2018 I was moonstruck. Now I could only look up. The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) supports research American art used to be risky. in all academic disciplines that is directed toward or extends inquiry on American art used to be frisky ultimate questions and questions of value. Fellows are encouraged to reflect And drink a lot of whiskey. on broad questions that link multiple areas of inquiry and to explore the I looked up at Emily, not far from the new Whitney. relationship between the descriptive and the normative in an engaging academic community of artists, scholars, and scientists. Seventy years ago, There were violently drunkard painters downtown who, The NDIAS encourages fellows to include questions about value, meaning, Many of them, painted violently and purpose in relationship to their particular research projects, to examine In the Hamptons also. how their findings might influence the world in concrete ways, and to think Now they were in the splendid new Whitney, dead through the moral implications of their research. Fellows receive stipends up Instead. to $60,000, subsidized housing, research funding, a faculty office at the NDIAS, including computer and printer, and multiple opportunities for I wished I had a sled dog’s beautiful eyes, engagement with other scholars and faculty of the University of Notre Dame. One blue, one brown, To mush across the blizzard whiteout The Institute offers residential fellowships for faculty and for graduate Of sexy chirping chicks and well-trimmed students. All those with promising and appropriate projects, whether Bearded white young men. distinguished and established or beginning a career, are invited to apply. You see how blue my old eyes aren’t.

For further information on residential fellowships at the NDIAS, please see I drank an after-dinner tumbler of whiskey ndias.nd.edu. Not far from the new Whitney, A present from the maître d’. The application deadline is October 15, 2016. Online applications will be Sweet Lagavulin single malt filled me with infinity available by June 1, 2016. Awards will be announced in spring 2017. Sixteen years old, while the girl Smiled softly. Direct questions to [email protected] or (574) 631-1305, or write to: NDIAS, 1124 Flanner Hall, Notre Dame, IN USA 46556. —Frederick Seidel

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