China’s heir apparent
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping. VOA Photo/Zhang Nan
If anyone were to forecast who will hold office at the White House, 10 Downing Street or Folketinget in 10 years time, chances are they’d be very wrong. Not in China though. The future leader in the Zhongnanhai complex, next to the Forbidden City in Beijing, is carefully selected years before he actually takes office.
This was the case of Jiang Zemin in 1993 and Hu Jintao in 2003, and is most likely to be the case again in 2012.
After his appointment to the standing committee of the politburo – China’s de facto top power organ - and the post as vice-president of China in 2008, and furthermore as vice-chairman of the military affairs committee in 2010, Xi Jinping (习近平) is destined to become the next leader of China when Hu Jintao leaves office after ten years in 2013. Xi Jinping will then take office as civilian head of the military, state president and, most importantly, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. Even though he will be referred to as President Xi internationally, his most important position is actually that of chairman of the party. In China the party rules over the government, hence he will be known as Chairman Xi domestically.
Xi was born in 1953 in Shaanxi Province as the son of Xi Zhongxun, a high-ranking party member who served as deputy prime minister from 1959-1962, but later fell foul of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Xi Jinping was then sent to work at a farm in the countryside as a punishment for his father’s “sins”. Furthermore, Xi was denied membership in the Communist Party of China.
However, Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, re-invited Xi Jinping’s father to the party, now as governor of the fast-developing Guangdong Province. Xi Jinping was allowed party membership in 1974, and studied Marxist thought and ideological education at Tsinghua University in Beijing as well as taking courses in chemical engineering.
Xi worked his way up the party ranks by firstly working at the state council and later by doing senior jobs in the coastal Fujian province.
In 2002 Xi moved to the neighbouring Zhejiang province where he eventually took over as party chief. He gained national press coverage after his tough stands on corruption and was, after the dismissal of Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu in 2006, elevated to his current position, ranking as one of the most influential party members in China.
He was appointed a standing member of the politburo in 2007, where he was given a more high-ranking position than the then thought president-to-be Li Keqiang (who was Hu Jintao’s favourite).
Since then, Xi has been in charge of the 2008 Beijing Olympics as well as being the governmental head of affairs regarding Hong Kong and Macau. Little is known about his personal standing points in politics, but he has gained a reputation of being both pragmatic and open.
He is, however, known for his willingness to discuss not only further market economic reforms, but also political reform. Former US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson described Xi as a man “who knows how to get things over the goal line”.
Xi is married to famous Chinese folk singer Peng Liyuan, and has a daughter enrolled at Harvard University. Hopefully, after Xi’s expected inauguration as General Secretary of the Communist Party pf China in November 2012, and as President of state in March 2013, his portrayal as pragmatic, hard-working, serious and his apparent disinterest in trappings of high office will prove him to be a leader who will continue the growth and development of China’s economy and domestic policies.
