Chinese President Xi Jinping is fast emerging as the modern-day Hitler, whom the world so desperately wants to remove. Xi Jinping’s blind expansionist policy was already under severe criticism before the China-made pandemic. The pandemic, its aftermath as China steps ups the offensive at the South China Sea with the likes of Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines and at the East China Sea with Japan and now the tense border stand-off with India, Xi Jinping has opened too many fronts just like Hitler, and this will eventually prove to be his undoing.
There’s a sense of urgency and insecurity in Xi Jinping’s actions which on a closer look is because of how his father Xi Zhongxun, who was once China’s Vice Premier and was later purged during the cultural revolution. Xi Jinping is desperate to not meet the same fate as his father and hence, has moved to usurp everything in China and the Chinese Communist Party, however, it seems that his fate has already been sealed.
Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun was one of Mao Zedong’s closest comrades who along with Mao overthrew the Kuomintang rule and established the People’s Republic of China and thus began the rise of the Chinese Communist Party. Mao who once described Zhongxun as a “leader of the people” oversaw his purge during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ as Zhongxun reportedly supported a novel which was perceived to be critical of Mao Zedong and his policies.
From being China’s youngest Vice Premier during the 1950s to being jailed, Zhongxun had a disastrous downfall which was followed by his son, Xi Jinping’s expulsion from his Beijing school, and an attack on his home by student militants. Xi Jinping ‘s mother was forced to publicly denounce his father and one of Xi’s sisters also committed suicide due to the pressure.
According to Chinese propaganda outlets, Xi Jinping then went on to a remote Chinese town where he did manual labour for seven years where he allegedly lived in a cave house as a part of the cultural revolution. Jinping was unable to get accustomed to rural life tried to flee to Beijing where he was arrested and subsequently sent to a camp where he dug ditches.
In 1972, Xi Jinping befriended a local official after being rejected seven times to join the Communist Youth League of China, and then it was a two-year process for Xi Jinping to gain the membership of the CCP after being rejected nine times.
Since then Xi Jinping never looked back and gradually rose to power in the CCP. But what made his rise to China’s most powerful leader since Mao is still up in the air due to the CCP’s opaque handling of its affairs. In fact, until 2007, Jinping’s second wife (his first marriage ended in a divorce) Peng Liyuan was much more famous than Jinping as the folk artist was renowned for her propaganda songs.
In what can be termed as a coup, Xi Jinping was elected to the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee under controversial circumstances in 2007 and later became the Vice Premier in 2008 where it became clear that Xi Jinping will succeed the incumbent Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2013 under mysterious circumstances.
Well aware of his father’s purge, as soon as Xi Jinping assumed the reigns of the CCP, he went on a deadly purge that saw over 1.5 million government officials jailed or mysteriously disappeared under the garb of corruption. The purge also took down 200,000 CCP leaders, including powerful Politburo members and Xi’s adversaries Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang.
Xi Jinping’s paranoia of meeting the same fate as his father saw him grab unprecedented power. Now, Xi Jinping is the General Secretary of the CCP, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and the President of the People’s Republic of China along with nine other titles. Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao didn’t enjoy such sweeping powers as his predecessor, Jiang Zemin continued to be the leader of the military after he stepped down from the Presidency.
Xi Jinping doesn’t want anyone to be breathing down his neck and has no plans to relinquish Presidency after 10 years which is the norm in the CCP. In March 2018, as the National Congress convened to decide Jinping’s successor once he steps down in 2022, it shockingly passed an amendment that abolished the country’s 10 year limit on Presidency thus allowing Jinping to rule the CCP and China till his last breath. The constitutional amendment also saw Jinping’s political theory being included in the constitution — a feat previously achieved only by Mao Zedong.
Xi Jinping has a lust for power and he knows if he steps down, he might be investigated and thrown in jail and forgotten from the history books just like his father. It is a matter of prestige for him to hold the reins of the CCP. Xi has steered away from Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping’s principle of ‘hide your strength, bide your time’ which involved China to fly under the radar and not make enemies out of every country. Incidentally, it was Xiaoping who added the limit on the Presidency.
Xi Jinping has done exactly the opposite as with the trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, the coronavirus pandemic and its blind expansionist policies, China is left with no allies, not that Jinping ever wanted allies thanks to his “Wolf-Warrior” diplomacy.
China is now being heralded into uncharted waters by the ever insecure Jinping as he stares at a precarious time ahead as countries like the US and Australia are making significant moves to decouple their respective economies from China. China’s economy was already reeling before the pandemic and it will only worsen as Jinping and his policies have managed to make an enemy out of almost every powerful country. The massively corrupt CCP officials certainly won’t like a hole in their purse who will be forced to remove Xi Jinping so as to protect their ill-gotten fortune. It seems that Xi Jinping is destined to meet the same fate as his father.