Reflection on CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping by Kerry Brown

               This is a pretty solid book if you’re looking to learn about the modern Chinese Communist party and its leader, Xi Jinping. I approached it wanting to learn more about modern China and I thought a good way would be through a book about Xi, and I was right. However, the book was a little tough to get through despite being less than 300 pages long. It’s missing something extra to make it readable, but maybe that has to do with the subject who largely seems like a boring guy. “Boring guy” is probably the exact image the Party wants for its leaders though, so I guess that’s on purpose. Another fault with this book is that it was published in 2015, two years before the 19^th Party Congress when Xi consolidated power, not naming a successor and setting himself up to change the constitution so that he can rule past the end of his two five-year terms that end in 2022. I would recommend finding a new biography published after this or a revised addition to get additional information about Xi’s more recent aspirations instead of reading this.

The most interesting stuff that happens in Xi’s life are probably the recent consolidation of power and his early experience with being “sent-down.” Xi’s father was one of the OG Communist Party members who was a successful general in the north of China and Mao’s right-hand-man and held the crucial position of censor. However, this all came crashing down when he allowed a novel to mention Gao Gang, an enemy of Mao. The elder Xi was pushed out of government and was very lucky to be left alive in a time when 60,000 were purged and 1,000 were killed. While most modern Chinese leaders lives during the Cultural Revolution are secret and obscured because of their participation in the Party’s horrible crimes, Xi Jinping’s life is well-known because he was on the right side. He was sent to do manual labor on farms during his teenage years and while there applied several times to become a member of the Party, successfully entering on his tenth try. Xi has used this experience to his advantage, being the first Chinese Communist since Mao to have a “life story” that he uses to connect to the people.

               The book really drives home the importance of the shift that happened in 1978, two years after Mao’s death. The author writes, “before 1978 the core task of the Party was to effect cleansing of the class ranks through mass campaigns and class struggle. Its ethos and language of power were wholly different from those of the Party after 1978, which accepted that economic production and growth were the keys to success and national strength.” The reforms made by Deng Xiaoping really changed everything and were solidified in 2001 with China’s entry into the WTO, drastically expanding markets. However, state owned enterprises (SOEs) remain critical to the state because they provide the state’s biggest cash flow. Taxation on persons and corporations makes up less than half of the Chinese government’s income- the majority comes from SOEs. The author writes that “after 1978, it was all about becoming wealthier and better off, even if that meant living with social differences. In essence, this can be understood as a transition from ideological to material goals.” That’s why 1978 is such an important year- China stopped caring about ideology and started caring about economy.

               The author ends by stating that Xi’s power comes directly through the Party and that he is only powerful through it, stating that “on this basis, he is no Mao.” Looking at these words three years later, I would not be so sure. Now that Xi is presumably set to reign for longer than his allotted ten years and has his own “Xi Jinping Thought” enshrined in the Communist Party’s constitution, things have changed. Remember the hierarchy of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics—the only name ever put next to the word “thought” was Mao Zedong’s. I’ll end this with two good quotes from the book:

“It is quite common to argue that the elite may do [what they do] out of cynical greed. Yet a cynic who believes in nothing is unlikely to be greedy. It does not take much to provide the objective biological needs of Homo Sapiens […] That is why cynics don’t build empires and why an imagined order can be maintained only if large segments of population – and in particular large segments of the elite and security forces – truly believe in it.”  - Yuval Noah Harari

“Politics is often about trying to negotiate about who will pay, and how, spreading the risks and burdens today, with the promise of returns sometime tomorrow, or in the future.”- Kerry  Brown, Author

Miscellaneous Facts:

• In the 80’s the Chinese oligarchs, all wanting their family to get ahead but realizing the need for merit to win the day agreed to allow one son from each family go into politics but no more
• Today the one true opposition to the leaders of the party is the hardcore left wing that holds up Mao as their idol and wants to expand State Owned Enterprises (SOE)
• The book often compares Xi to Pope Francis as the leader of a “faith” of over a billion people and often discusses how the Chinese Communists look to the Catholic Church as a model for their own growth, mainly impressed by its 2,000-year survival