Behind the Personality Cult of Xi Jinping
MARCH 8, 2016
Since assuming office in late 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has quickly consolidated power. He has launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign, reorganized the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and tightened controls over media and the Internet — as well as cultivating a cult of personality. Xi’s name has appeared in ruling Communist Party publications with greater frequency that his two most recent predecessors.References to Xi as China’s “core” leader imply a status similar to that of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Songs and videos — some grassroots, some officially commissioned — praising Xi have even gone viral online. In this ChinaFile conversation, experts discuss why Xi has worked to create a cult of personality, and how this may affect Chinese politics in the future.
Jiayang Fan, editorial staff at the New Yorker:
It is evident from his first three years in office that Xi’s top priority is to legitimize his authority and rejuvenate the Communist Party. Therefore, any resources he can marshal to that effect — be it revival of nationalist fervor, the espousal of “red” rhetoric, or songs in praise of his personal and professional conduct — can only further this objective. It is an open question what the precise role his cult of personality will play in the larger agenda but its successful cultivation surely figures as a political gain.
For years, the Chinese public have been inured to the excesses and incompetence of officialdom. The image of politicians living large on the people’s dime, lawlessly luxuriating in ways that directly contradict what the party preaches, has assumed the cast of dark comedy. In China, both the young and old sometimes will sing me catchy little ditties about the profligacies of guanyuan — officials — and resign themselves to the unbridgeable chasm dividing these guanyuan from ordinary citizens. What’s more, the stiffness of technocrats such as former President Hu Jintao, his stilted manners and near total absence of charisma, has only contributed to the perception of Chinese leaders as necessarily devoid of warmth and vitality.
In contrast, the comparative charm of Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan, and the liveliness of their demeanor, suggest a greater awareness of self-presentation and perhaps, shrewder public relations. I think it’s highly possible that due to upbringing and personal taste,Xi may indeed believe and practice the doctrines he propounds; that more than mere theater, he truly hopes to reform the behavior and depravity of the party.
Whatever factors that make up Xi’s public relations campaign, they are less worrying than his growing intolerance for any opinion that diverges from the official line. Recently, during a highly televised visit to the three main official news organizations, Xi affirmed that “the party- and government-run media are a propaganda front and must be surnamed ‘party.'” When Ren Zhiqiang, a real estate tycoon and influential media blogger, criticized the increasing controls the government wielded over news media, his Weibo account was shut down immediately. The expediency of the government’s censorship has cast a chill over the annual National People’s Congress, now in session in Beijing.
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