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China’s Risky Mao-Style Focus on the Personal Life of President Xi Jinping

Associated Press

Chinese media's relentless focus on the achievements and personal life of President Xi Jinping represents a sharp break with recent leadership practice in China, which has studiously avoided the personality cult that surrounded Mao Zedong. WSJ's Andrew Browne traveled to Liangjiahe, the cave village in northern China where Mr. Xi was banished during the Cultural Revolution, to answer a question: Is it all about personal aggrandizement? Or is it a media-driven effort by the troubled Communist Party to capitalize on an immensely popular president?

It may be both. Just over two years into his term, three major anthologies of Mr. Xi’s speeches and writings have rolled off the official printing presses. The Chinese characters for “China Dream,” Mr. Xi’s catchphrase for national rejuvenation, are plastered across subway stations, bus stops and billboards. Party newspapers extol the “Spirit of Xi Jinping.”

There’s an irony, of course, in Mr. Xi taking a leaf from Mao, who persecuted his father. But Mr. Xi’s main goal is to save the Party. That means preserving Mao as a symbol of Communist rule.

In Liangjiahe, meanwhile, Party propagandists are molding a public persona for Mr. Xi that draws on his seven years in the countryside among simple farmers.

Amid the soft hills of Shaanxi province near Yan’an, the cradle of the revolution, Mr. Xi came of age and joined the Party. The cave where he slept on a straw mat has been carefully preserved. There’s an oil lamp, neatly folded quilt, a battered green water bottle and a wooden pitchfork.

Residents are on hand to attest to Mr. Xi’s man-of-the-people virtues. Lu Housheng recalls how he slept side-by-side with Mr. Xi and taught him how to plant crops. He knew how to “eat bitterness,” says Mr. Lu, a term than means suffering. “He was very down-to-earth.”

...There are clear dangers in this kind of exaltation. The drift away from a collective style of leadership that Deng put in place means that China’s outlook is now heavily reliant on a single individual. His personal preferences become national priorities. Along with a crackdown on corruption, which has overwhelming public support, Mr. Xi has launched an assault on NGOs, bloggers, underground Christians, human rights lawyers and other activists that stirs deep anxieties.

Tourists in Liangjianghe pose for photos outside the cave where Xi Jinping lived for seven years during the Cultural Revolution.
Andrew Browne/The Wall Street Journal

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