Who is Xi Jinping? As the leader of the world’s most populous country and second-largest economy (GDP), Xi Jinping has a firm grip on China’s only political party.
After becoming president in 2012, Xi quickly saw the benefits of privatization-friendly reforms.
He is widely credited with the Chinese dream slogan, a set of personal and national ideals for the advancement of Chinese society.
In the wake of news related to Xi Jinping’s arrest, many people still think that the American president is the most powerful person in the world.
But times have changed. In recent years we have seen the President of China being the most powerful person.
Ironically, it was considered that the capitalists made the Chinese Communist Party strong.
From Apple to Microsoft, Siemens to Volkswagen, companies seeking to take advantage of lower wages and China’s 1.4 billion customers have all moved key manufacturing elements from the heartland of America and Europe to China.
In 2014, China surpassed the United States in terms of GDP adjusted for purchasing power, ahead of all other economies in the world.
Since the Americans have been the number one since 1872, this represents a tectonic change, whose dimensions have yet to understand.
Who is Xi Jinping?
Xi Jinping has not started this transformation, but since he became Chinese president in 2013, he dominated the country.
The transformation of XI by China started with a campaign against corruption, in which 1.5 million officials were punished to process power, including seven from the best ranks of leadership (i.e. the politicians and the ministers) and two dozen general seniors.
Two main officials were sentenced to death. Cleaning and tones were used to eliminate all real or potential opponents and to concentrate power in the hands of XI. They also popularized him among the Chinese as a strongman.
Today, Xi has surpassed his goal of becoming the new Mao. In November 2021, the Communist Party Central Committee passed a resolution “resolutely upholding Comrade Xi Jinping’s central position in the Party Central Committee and the Party as a whole.”
It was only the third time that the Party Central Committee passed a resolution on the party’s own history.
But while Mao has reigned through a badly developing country, Xi Jinping is now leading an economic superpower.
And while Mao was mainly on communist doctrine, Xi has a more resonant ideological weapon: nationalism.
In addition to Confucius and Chinese emperors, it is positioned as a testamentary executor of a historical mission: to overcome the humiliation of the Chinese people through the previous colonial powers and to put an end to Western domination for centuries.
To fulfill his mission, Xi lifted the term limit imposed on his predecessors in the presidency, allowing him to rule until death.
Nationalist rhetoric justifies Xi’s efforts to expand China’s current territory.
He has already succeeded in bringing Hong Kong to heel and jailing the democrats without provoking a major international reaction, and he wants to bring Taiwan back to the homeland of the empire in his lifetime.
Asserting sovereignty over the South China Sea, it claims resource-rich areas in Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine shows how the international balance of power has changed. Biden can threaten or beg Putin; he can’t stop it. Xi Jinping could stop Putin if he wanted – but he doesn’t because everything is on its way.
Putin invaded Ukraine after Xi received him at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, where the two issued a joint statement reaffirming their shared worldview.
At the time, Putin correctly understood that Western sanctions would not hurt him in the long run, as China would love to buy Russian gas and oil.
If the entire situation related to Chinese President Xi is real, it is more likely to pose unprecedented challenges to the rest of the states as well.
An unstable China could cause a massive market crash, due to its dependency on the Global supply chain and China’s investment in Global stocks bonds, and Securities
