Xi Jinping is the undisputed ruler of the Chinese Communist Party and therefore of the world’s rising global superpower. While Xi holds onto power with an iron grip the 70-year-old did not always look destined for power.
Xi is the son of former Chinese deputy Premier Xi Zhongxun who fell out of favour with Chairman Mao Zedong in 1962 which cast the entire family into hardship.
The experience is believed to have moulded the young Xi into a political fighter able to navigate the dangerous waters of Chinese Communist Party politics. The Chinese Communist Party awarded Xi into a third term as its leader last year – and there are no limits on the amount of times he can be re-elected.
Xi began his rise through the CCP power hierarchy in the late 1970s, after spending seven years as one of the many urban youth sent to the countryside by Mao.
From 1979 to 2007, he served as the office secretary of the General Office of the State Council, acting governor of Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, and secretary of the CCP’s Shanghai Municipal Committee.
Xi’s performance in these positions was unremarkable. Instead of launching major projects, his track record suggests that he kept a low profile, focusing on avoiding scandal and actions that might offend potential CCP power players, according to Politico.
The approach paid off and Xi was noticed by senior party figures who mistakenly believed he could be easily controlled. Once Xi was promoted into the powerful central committee he took steps to consolidate power by launching anti-corruption purges and staking open party positions with loyalists.
Andrew J Nathan, a political science professor at Columbia University told Politico: “They saw him as a sort of malleable, loyal guy who would treat them as elders in the right way and not rock the boat.
“He has surprised us with his fierce control-freak mentality of taking over everything and purging a lot of people and consolidating power.”
It comes as China has sparked WW3 fears as Xi Jinping has reportedly ‘purged’ his country’s military – and instead bringing in loyalists who are “prepared to fight”.
As tensions continue to rise between China and Taiwan and a number of other countries, expert Gordon Chang claimed Xi is “trying to gain control of the military” because “he is thinking that he needs officers who are prepared to actually fight”.
He said: “There is a sense that many of China’s general officers don’t want to fight. And so we really have a force led by an officer corps that is ambivalent about going to war.”
Meanwhile China is on the brink of another war with the tiny country of Bhutan. The Chinese leader is reportedly trying to annexe lands from the bordering Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan – home to less than 800,000 people – where statellite images appear to show infrastructure projects eating into border terrotiries in the north of the tiny country.
