Reflection on Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping by Francois Bougon

               Now here’s a great book for understanding the basics of modern China. It is very similar to CEO China by Kerry Brown. While CEO is a more historically-minded book, Inside is more about the present and future. One of the fundamental facts about Xi that both books agree on is that he is authoritarian. He is most opposed to “ideological confusion,” which is a funny way of saying freedom of thought. He sees the end of the Soviet Union as the result of the relaxing of central controls and will fight to avoid anything like that in China. He also points out that army control is critical—that the army is not the tool of the state or the people but rather the tool of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Despite himself having suffered under Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Xi does not want to de-Maoize China as Russia was se-Stalinized. Xi wants to centralize his and the Party’s power by preventing the emergence of an independent judiciary and rehabilitating the image of Mao. His vision is of the continued growth of China into a worldwide superpower in 2049, the 100^th anniversary of the successful communist revolution. This national rejuvenation will be dependent on the party, though many scholars now think that as  result of this greater centralization and party control that China’s institutions will get much weaker.