Xi Jinping

• 1. Introduction

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  Xi Jinping was born on the 15th of June 1953 in Beijing, the son of a Communist Party revolutionary who would later be imprisoned by the very system he had helped build. That family history - the purges, the cave houses, the failed applications to join the party - makes Xi's rise to become China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong one of the more improbable journeys in modern political history. How does a teenager sent to dig ditches in rural Shaanxi end up rewriting the constitution to keep himself in power indefinitely? What kind of governance did he construct once he got there? And what does his rule mean for the more than a billion people living under it, and for the world watching from outside?

• 2. A Teenager in Exile

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  In 1963, when Xi was ten years old, his father Xi Zhongxun was stripped of his party positions and sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, Henan. Three years later, the Cultural Revolution arrived. Student militants ransacked the Xi family home, and Xi's mother was forced to publicly denounce his father before a crowd. By 1968, when Xi was fifteen, his father had been imprisoned outright.

  Xi was sent to Liangjiahe Village in Yan'an, Shaanxi, as part of the Down to the Countryside Movement. The region was, by his own later account, simple and underdeveloped. Within months, unable to stand it, he ran away back to Beijing. He was caught during a crackdown on deserters and sent to a work camp to dig ditches before his aunt and uncle persuaded him to return to the village.

  He would spend a total of seven years in Liangjiahe, living in a yaodong - a type of cave house common in northern China. During that period, his half-sister Heping died by suicide at her military academy. Despite submitting ten unsuccessful applications to join the Communist Party, his father's political persecution meant each one was blocked by higher authorities. It was only after a new commune secretary recognized Xi's capabilities that his application was forwarded and approved in early 1974.

  From Liangjiahe, Xi was recommended for a place at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he studied chemical engineering from 1975 to 1979 as a worker-peasant-soldier student. The young man who had arrived in the countryside a frightened runaway left it with a university recommendation and a party card.

• 3. Building a Career from the Ground Up

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  After graduating in April 1979, Xi was assigned to serve as one of three secretaries to Geng Biao, a Politburo member and Minister of National Defense. The post gave him access to central meetings, confidential documents, and the handling of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan affairs - an education in national power that few officials at his level received.

  On the 25th of March 1982, Xi was appointed deputy party secretary of Zhengding County in Hebei. Working alongside fellow deputy secretary Lu Yulan, he successfully lobbied the central government to reduce the annual grain requisition burden on local farmers by 14 million kilograms. By 1983 he had become county party secretary and launched a string of development projects, including persuading the China Teleplay Production Center to film Dream of the Red Chamber in Zhengding. The production generated 17.61 million yuan in tourism revenue that year alone.

  In 1985, Xi joined a study tour to Iowa in the United States to examine corn processing and agricultural production. While he was abroad, the CCP Central Organization Department transferred him to Xiamen as vice mayor - the start of a long tenure on China's southeastern coast.

  Ariving in Fujian, Xi drafted Xiamen's first strategic development plan, covering the period 1985 to 2000. He later served as party secretary of Ningde, whose economy lagged far behind Fuzhou and Xiamen, and condensed his experiences there into a book called Getting out of Poverty. By 1999 he was governor of Fujian, overseeing projects including Changle International Airport, the Fuzhou Telecommunication Hub, and efforts to attract Taiwanese and foreign investment that brought companies like Fuyao Glass and Southeast Automobile to the province.

  In 2002 he moved to neighboring Zhejiang, where he presided over reported annual growth averaging 14 percent. Between 2004 and 2007, Li Qiang served as Xi's chief of staff; the two drafted the Double Eight Strategy together, a document listing eight comparative advantages of Zhejiang and eight matching actions. That working relationship would endure: Li Qiang became premier in 2023.

• 4. The Ascent to Power

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  Following the dismissal of Shanghai party secretary Chen Liangyu in September 2006 over a social security fund scandal, Xi was transferred to Shanghai on the 24th of March 2007. He stayed seven months, keeping a deliberately low profile and pledging there would be no purges despite widespread suspicion that local officials had been entangled in Chen's corruption.

  One episode from that period captured Xi's style precisely. Shanghai administrators tried to earn favor by arranging a special train to shuttle him between Shanghai and Hangzhou while he handed off duties to his Zhejiang successor. Xi refused, citing a loosely enforced party rule reserving special trains for national leaders. The gesture was calculated and noted.

  On the 22nd of October 2007, immediately after the 17th Party Congress, Xi was elected to the Politburo Standing Committee as its sixth-ranked member. His ranking above Li Keqiang signaled that he was being groomed as Hu Jintao's successor. At the first session of the 11th National People's Congress in March 2008, he was formally elected vice president.

  As vice president, Xi oversaw preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and led the central government's coordination after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, visiting disaster areas in Shaanxi and Gansu. His position as heir apparent was briefly threatened by the rapid rise of Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party secretary, who inspired policy imitations across China and received public praise from Xi himself during a 2010 visit. Those records of praise were later erased after Bo's downfall in the Wang Lijun incident.

  On the 15th of November 2012, immediately after the 18th Party National Congress, Xi was elected general secretary and chairman of the Party Central Military Commission. He was elected president on the 14th of March 2013, receiving 2,952 votes in favor, one against, and three abstentions. He was the first paramount leader born after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

• 5. The Anti-Corruption Machine

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  In his inaugural speech as general secretary, Xi named fighting corruption as one of the toughest challenges facing the party. Within months, he issued the Eight-point Regulation, a set of rules intended to curb waste and misconduct during official party business, and vowed to root out both "tigers" - senior officials - and "flies" - ordinary functionaries.

  The campaign reached the highest levels. Xi initiated cases against former CMC vice chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, former Politburo Standing Committee member and security chief Zhou Yongkang, and former CCP General Office director Ling Jihua. In 2017, Chongqing Party Secretary and Politburo member Sun Zhengcai fell. Within the first two years of the campaign, over 200,000 officials received warnings, fines, or demotions. As of 2023, approximately 2.3 million government officials had been prosecuted in total.

  According to the Wall Street Journal, anti-corruption punishment for officials at or above the vice ministerial level requires approval from Xi personally. A National Supervisory Commission was established in March 2018 as the highest state supervisory and anti-corruption authority, supplementing the existing Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

  The campaign did not spare the military. Among those targeted were former defense ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, CMC vice chairmen He Weidong and Zhang Youxia, and CMC member Miao Hua. By October 2025, Bloomberg News estimated at least 14 generals out of 79 appointed under Xi's leadership had been ousted. In 2025, Xi also launched a campaign requiring cadres of vice-ministerial rank or above to either bring family members residing abroad back to China or resign from office.

• 6. Remaking the State

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  Xi removed presidential term limits in March 2018, when the first session of the 13th National People's Congress passed constitutional amendments that also created the National Supervisory Commission and codified the CCP's leading role in governance. Political observers called him the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

  He reorganized the People's Liberation Army from its foundations. In 2015 he announced a reduction of 300,000 troops, bringing total PLA size to 2 million. In 2016 he reduced the number of theater commands from seven to five and abolished the four autonomous general departments, replacing them with 15 agencies reporting directly to the CMC. The Strategic Support Force, Joint Logistics Support Force, and PLA Rocket Force - an upgrade of the former Second Artillery Corps - were all created under his reforms. In 2024 the Strategic Support Force was itself dissolved and replaced by the Aerospace Force, the Cyberspace Force, and the Information Support Force. China's official military budget more than doubled under Xi, reaching a record $282 billion in 2026. Aircraft carrier Shandong entered service in 2019 and Fujian in 2025. In 2017, China opened its first overseas military base, in Djibouti.

  The censorship apparatus was also restructured. In August 2013, Xi gave what became known as the August 19 speech, stressing the guiding role of ideology in propaganda. At a 2016 symposium he stated that party and government media must hold what he called the family name of the party. In September 2013, the Supreme People's Court authorized a three-year prison sentence for bloggers who shared content deemed defamatory more than 500 times. A real-name registration system for online platforms was introduced, requiring collection of users' real names and ID numbers.

  Under Xi, the share of laws passed by the NPC that explicitly affirmed CCP leadership rose from 4 percent in 2018 to nearly 70 percent in 2024.

• 7. China's Place in the World

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  In 2013, Xi announced the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure and economic development project spanning much of Africa and Eurasia. Xi himself later described it as the largest infrastructure investment by a great power since the Marshall Plan. That same year, he announced the founding of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, positioned as a competitor to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

  In November 2015, Xi met with Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou, the first meeting between political leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait since the end of the Chinese Civil War in mainland China in 1950. Relations deteriorated after Tsai Ing-wen and the Democratic Progressive Party won the 2016 presidential election in Taiwan. In January 2019, Xi gave a speech marking the 40th anniversary of the Message to Compatriots in Taiwan, stating: "We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means."

  The 2020 Hong Kong national security law, passed by the National People's Congress Standing Committee, dramatically expanded the government's capacity to suppress political opposition in the city. Xi visited Hong Kong in 2017 to swear in Carrie Lam as chief executive and again in 2022 to swear in John Lee Ka-chiu, a former police officer backed by Beijing.

  During the Russo-Ukrainian war, Xi expressed opposition to sanctions against Russia while also stating China was committed to respecting the territorial integrity of all countries. China cast itself as a neutral party while maintaining closer ties with Moscow.

  In 2025, China announced it would remove nearly all import tariffs on African countries. The Federation of American Scientists estimated China's total nuclear arsenal at 600 warheads in 2025, with the US Department of Defense projecting it could reach 1,000 by 2030.

• 8. Economy and Society

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  China's economy more than doubled under Xi, growing from CN¥54.8 trillion (US$8.7 trillion) in 2012 to CN¥140.2 trillion (US$20.1 trillion) in 2025, though growth slowed from 7.9 percent in 2012 to 5 percent in 2024. When Xi took office, 58 percent of people in China lived on less than $8.30 per day; by 2022 that figure had fallen to 21 percent.

  Xi declared a "complete victory" over extreme poverty in 2021, saying nearly 100 million people had been lifted out of poverty under his tenure. Some experts noted that China's poverty threshold was lower than that of the World Bank. In 2020, Premier Li Keqiang cited National Bureau of Statistics data suggesting 600 million Chinese people still lived on less than 1,000 yuan, or roughly $140, per month.

  In 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that Xi ordered a halt to Ant Group's initial public offering in reaction to its founder Jack Ma publicly criticizing government financial regulation. The crackdown was framed under the banner of common prosperity, a term Xi defined as an essential requirement of socialism. It led to fines against large technology companies, severe restrictions on the private tutoring industry, limits on minors playing video games, and crackdowns on celebrity culture.

  In 2019, Xi declared in the 19th CCP National Congress that "houses are for living, not for speculation." His government introduced the three red lines policy in 2020 to deleverage heavily indebted property developers. Since 2021, China has faced a property sector crisis marked by falling house prices and the bankruptcy of numerous developers.

  China's domestic research and development spending increased significantly, surpassing the European Union and reaching a record $564 billion in 2020. The Federation of American Scientists placed China's nuclear arsenal at 600 warheads in 2025, a figure the US Department of Defense projected could reach 1,000 by 2030 - a detail that loomed over every dimension of Xi's foreign and economic ambitions.