{"id":2714,"date":"2018-03-06T03:14:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T11:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=2714"},"modified":"2018-03-06T03:14:58","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T11:14:58","slug":"behind-public-persona-the-real-xi-jinping-is-a-guarded-secret-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=2714","title":{"rendered":"“Behind Public Persona, the Real Xi Jinping Is a Guarded Secret”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Steven Lee Myers, Front Page,\u00a0March<\/span><\/span>

BEIJING \u2014 One Sunday last month, China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping, traveled to a village in the mountains of Sichuan Province. He wore an olive overcoat with a fur collar, which he kept zipped up even when he entered an adobe house to meet with villagers. Around an indoor fire pit, he sat among a circle of people wearing traditional clothes of the Yi minority group.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did the Communist Party come into being?\u201d he asked<\/a> at one point as he extolled the virtues of socialism. Without hesitating, he answered. \u201cIt was established to lead people to a happy life,\u201d he said, and then he added:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we should do forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Xi\u2019s remark \u2014 specifically its open-ended pledge \u2014 suddenly resonates more deeply than before. Barring the unexpected, delegates gathering this week for the annual National People\u2019s Congress in Beijing will rubber-stamp constitutional changes that will enable Mr. Xi to remain the country\u2019s leader indefinitely by eliminating presidential term limits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Xi, who will turn 65 in June, has done more than any of his predecessors to create a public persona as an avuncular man of the people<\/a>, even as he has maneuvered behind the scenes with a ruthless ambition to dominate China\u2019s enigmatic elite politics.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s propaganda apparatus regularly depicts him as a firm yet adoring patriarch and leader who fights poverty and corruption at home while building China\u2019s prestige abroad as an emerging superpower.<\/p>\n

What is striking is how little is known about Mr. Xi\u2019s biography as a leader, even though he has held the country\u2019s highest posts since 2012 \u2014 president, general secretary and commander in chief, among others.<\/p>\n

Even the move to stay in power, announced on Feb. 25, caught many here by surprise. It has shaken Chinese politics and stirred an unusual amount of rumblings<\/a>, if not open dissent. In hindsight, though, scenes like the one in Sichuan have for years been building the foundation for Mr. Xi\u2019s elevation to a status unlike any Chinese leader since Mao.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason it is hard to see inside,\u201d Mr. Brown said of Zhongnanhai, \u201cis in part because it is hard to see out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The secrecy certainly contributes to the mystique of power in China, as elsewhere, but the closed and by all accounts small circle where decisions are made could also lay the foundation for challenges to his rule, especially if China faces unforeseen crises in the years ahead, experts say.<\/p>\n

That could explain why the government seemed not to anticipate the opposition to removing the term limits, which sent the censors into overdrive, blocking mentions of words like \u201cmy emperor<\/a>.\u201d The state news media has since played down the issue as if it were a small, routine matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cChinese politicians value term limits and retirement rules as protection for their security against a leader who otherwise could ruin their careers at any time,\u201d Susan L. Shirk, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an essay titled \u201cThe Return to Personalistic Rule,\u201d<\/a> which appears in the April issue of \u201cJournal of Democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the odds of success for an elite rebellion may be low,\u201d she went on, \u201cthe more autocratically a leader behaves the more likely are other politicians to try to bring him down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Xi\u2019s dominance of politics was on display on Monday when the National People\u2019s Congress opened in Beijing. A sampling of the nearly 3,000 delegates found no one who would express even the slightest reservation about the constitutional change. One delegate, Tang Chunya, who runs a traditional medicine business in Hunan Province, said the removal of term limits was \u201can improvement of the political environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am definitely supporting Chairman Xi because he leads the country and he builds it into a strong one,\u201d Ms. Tang said. \u201cUnder his leadership, people are happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is difficult to measure popular opinion in China, but there seems to be little doubt that the country\u2019s economic and political stability in recent years \u2014 bolstered by hagiographic coverage \u2014 has bolstered Mr. Xi\u2019s efforts to consolidate political power.<\/p>\n

So has his campaign against corruption, which, according to Ms. Shirk\u2019s count, punished 20 members of the Central Committee or the Politburo and more than 100 generals or admirals. The campaign has had the dual benefits of eliminating potential rivals while delivering a populist message to ordinary Chinese sickened by the flaunting of wealth among the politically connected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conventional theory is that the party hates him but the people love him,\u201d said Richard McGregor, the author of \u201cThe Party: The Secret World of China\u2019s Communist Rulers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his book, Mr. Brown writes that Mr. Xi, unlike his predecessors, used his personal narrative to give himself \u201cpolitical validation\u201d that proved useful as he rose through the ranks.<\/p>\n

His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a commander in the war against Japan and then in the civil war that brought the Communists to power. He then became a senior government minister, working in the Propaganda Ministry when the younger Xi, the third of four children, was born in 1953.<\/p>\n

Mr. Xi grew up as a princeling of the new ruling elite, but in the fractious era that followed, his father fell out of favor, targeted for humiliation in the Cultural Revolution and imprisoned. Mr. Xi was also harassed<\/a> \u2014 paraded by Mao\u2019s Red Guards, with his mother forced to join in one public denunciation \u2014 before he was, at 16, \u201csent down\u201d to toil in the countryside in the name of the revolution.<\/p>\n

He spent seven years in Shaanxi Province, but instead of recollecting the experience as a punishment, he has done as Mao evidently intended, describing it as a lesson that made him more confident and enlightened. He often describes himself as having been a farmer for those years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am from the grass roots, too,\u201d he told a group of farmers during a 2013 visit to Costa Rica in remarks shown in a documentary<\/a> on his diplomatic travels that was broadcast in January. \u201cI have a natural bond with the common people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the same way, he uses his brief service in uniform \u2014 he worked on the general staff of the State Council and the Central Military Commission from 1979 to 1982 \u2014 to claim a military pedigree as well, though he was more of a staff officer than a foot soldier.<\/p>\n

As commander in chief, he often appears in fatigues when overseeing military parades, which have become more prominent as he has pressed ahead with a modernization program<\/a> for the People\u2019s Liberation Army. Mr. McGregor said that Mr. Xi\u2019s predecessors were far less personable and charismatic, especially Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe presents much better in public,\u201d he said. \u201cHu Jintao was, by comparison, an automaton.\u201d<\/p>\n