Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping by Francois Bougon

Author:Francois Bougon [Bougon, Francois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789387578760
Publisher: Westland
Published: 2018-10-16T22:00:00+00:00

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BACK TO THE CLASSICS

Xi Jinping likes to write and show off the extent of his literary knowledge. Since starting out in the Party bureaucracy in the 1980s, he has frequently written for local newspapers, without, however, claiming to be a ‘real’ writer, as Mao did. Whether prose or poetry, Xi’s works are always political. Between 2003 and 2007, he was Party secretary of the eastern, coastal province of Zhejiang, one of the wealthiest in the country. He regularly published a column under a pseudonym in the Zhejiang Daily. His pen name is Zhe Xin, its two characters meaning ‘wise’ and ‘happy’; it is also a homophonic play, echoing both Zhejiang province and xinxi, meaning ‘joyful’. The future leader—the ‘happy philosopher’, ‘the joyous sage’—had many plans in store.

While he writes in an overblown style typical of officials educated in the Party schools, Xi has always been keen to include quotations from classical authors in his texts. Apart from Hu’s prime minister Wen Jiabao (2003–13), Xi is the first Chinese leader since Mao to quote the classics with such ease. His reading of great texts since primary school appears to have had a marked effect on him. He draws stylistic inspiration from his readings; does he also find in them new ways of thinking about the world around him, of meditating on power or the deeds of men?

The first observation we can make is that he does not neglect a single school of Chinese thought. This wide-ranging borrowing is above all a sign that he finds the Marxist– Leninist base solid enough to graft onto it the long history of ‘wonderful Chinese civilisation’. In the twenty-first century, the Party has taken possession of the entire history of the country—of ‘5,000 years of continuous civilisation’. Its officials are encouraged to study this history, along with Marxist thought. ‘Leadership cadres must study history and culture, especially traditional Chinese culture, to enrich their wisdom and perfect their personality through study,’ Xi declared on 1 March 2013, the Central Communist Party School’s eightieth anniversary. ‘China’s traditional culture is both extensive and profound, and to acquire the essence of various thoughts is beneficial to the formation of a correct world view, outlook on life, and sense of values’.

So what are the key sources that Xi uses, bolstered by the might of his impressive propaganda machine? One important influence has been the authors of the Warring States period of the fifth to third centuries BCE. Their status in China is equivalent to that of the Ancient Greeks in the West. While it has become less common in Europe for politicians to cite the classics, it is almost second-nature in China. These authors are the fertile soil of a literary and philosophical culture shared by the educated urban populations: the Warring States period has left a lasting mark on Chinese society. It was a period of striking intellectual fertility, characterised by its great political instability: the seven states—Qi, Chu, Han, Zhao, Wei, Yan, and Qin—were constantly at war with each other.

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