The evidence on a potential fifth characteristic-how Xi views the nature of political threats- is more ambiguous. The fourth is cautiousness, which includes political prudence, self-discipline, and the careful avoidance of demonstrating any dangerous ambitions (because this last trait disappeared when Xi ascended to the top position, it will receive less attention). The third is pragmatism, as in flexibility when selecting means to achieve concrete goals. The second is idealism, defined as conviction, a sense of mission, and antipathy towards materialism. The first is toughness, meaning self-confidence and a belief in personal efficacy. Political scientists have also helped conceptualise what kinds of leadership traits are the most interesting (House and Baetz 1990 Hermann 1980).ħ The evidence is strong that Xi Jinping’s youth had a role in developing four key traits that I have gleaned in drawing on my sources. One of the key ways in which leaders develop such ideas is through previous experiences (Kennedy 2012 Jervis 1976). Second, leaders matter because they have their own ideas about how the world works (George 1969). First, as Richard Samuels has argued, people in positions of high authority often have significant freedom of manoeuvre (Samuels 2005). Personal experiences and characteristicsĦ Why do we care about Xi Jinping? Despite the significance many political scientists give to structural factors, they have also studied the importance of individual leaders (Jones and Olken 2009 Byman and Pollack 2001 Mahoney and Snyder 1999). However, the material is less clear on how Xi’s youth might have affected his later behaviour towards potential enemies, both inside and outside the Party. Xi’s early life does help explain his toughness, idealism, pragmatism, and caution. Crucially, these sources can be heavily supplemented by: memoir literature written by individuals who had life experiences similar to Xi’s reporting by Western journalists and high‑quality Chinese and Western secondary literature on what we know about Xi’s generation more broadly.ĥ A generally coherent picture emerges from this evidence.
However, they can be mined for biographical details, and some of the claims can be treated as possibilities. Some of the more problematic sources, such as Xi’s own numerous autobiographical statements and accounts of varying quality provided by friends and family, should be treated sceptically, as they fit a narrative of political legitimacy (Brown 2016: 50). However, the issue is relevant enough, and the evidence available today interesting enough, to provide an interim account that, unlike previous scholarship, gives a focused account entirely on Xi’s early life. I then ask whether Xi’s later behaviour fits our understanding of what we would expect someone with such a background to learn.Ĥ The source material is not perfect. Instead, I categorise and examine Xi’s early experiences, both before and after the Cultural Revolution started, based on how they might have affected his character traits in specific ways. Nor is it to engage in a psychoanalytic, Freudian approach as other researchers of leaders have done (Pye 1976 George and George 1964). The conditions were severe, but by the time he returned to Beijing in 1975, he was a party member with a ticket to the elite Tsinghua University.ģ But what do these experiences tell us about how Xi thinks about the world? The intention here is not to provide a simple biography.
For several years after the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, radicals harassed Jinping in Beijing on the basis of his father having been purged, until he became a sent‑down youth, one of the many young men and women who left for the countryside to “learn from the peasants.” He spent most of this time in Liangjiahe 梁家河, a small village in the Yan’an 延安 region of poor Shaanxi Province. 2 Jinping attended the August 1 Middle School, an elite academy populated mostly by the offspring of high-ranking military officials. In 1953, Xi was born in Beijing to Xi Zhongxun 习仲勋, a high‑ranking party figure who had spent his early career in north‑western Shaanxi Province and was removed from the central party leadership in 1962. 2 Xi Zhongxun was purged because of his half-hearted support for a novel that touched upon sensitive (.)Ģ Leading scholars such as Kerry Brown and Willy Wo‑Lap Lam have already provided important accounts of Xi’s early life (Brown 20).
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