Over the past three years, a narrative about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s desire to remain at China’s helm for another five or ten years after 2022 has steadily taken hold. Together with this “Xi Forever” narrative, there has been growing speculation that, in order to break a precedent that requires leaders to retire at [...]
Xi Jinping is the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping. No, Xi is the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong! No, Xi is as powerful as Mao! You've probably read these a million times since Xi came to power in 2012. Yet, is Xi really as powerful as the founder of Communist China, who later started the Cultural Revolution, [...]
A party strategy “If we fail to handle this issue [corruption] well, it could prove fatal to the party and even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state”. Thus spoke the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the party’s 18th National Congress, in November 2012. This ominous warning [...]