Who Is Xi Jinping?

1. A princeling sent to the countryside

Xi Jinping was born on 15 June 1953 in Beijing, the son of Xi Zhongxun, a veteran of the Communist revolution who became a senior official, and Qi Xin. His early life was comfortable, but it changed abruptly during the Cultural Revolution, when his father was purged and imprisoned, and Xi himself, at fifteen, was sent to the village of Liangjiahe in Shaanxi province as a sent-down youth. He lived in a cave dwelling, worked in the fields, and spent seven years in the village, an experience he has described as the most formative of his life. The story of Liangjiahe is now a central part of his public image: the leader who knows rural China because he lived in it.

Xi joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1974, after several attempts, and in 1975 he was admitted to Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he studied chemical engineering. After graduation he worked as a secretary to a senior military official, and then began a long climb through provincial government. He served in Hebei, Fujian, Zhejiang and Shanghai, building a reputation as a capable and disciplined administrator. In Fujian he dealt with Taiwan across the strait, and in Zhejiang he oversaw a period of rapid economic growth driven by private enterprise. His provincial career gave him experience of both the coastal economy and the party's internal politics, and it brought him into contact with the business and political networks that would support his rise.

The provincial years also shaped his political style. Colleagues from that period describe a leader who was cautious, hard-working and attentive to detail, and who avoided the flamboyance of some of his contemporaries. He married Peng Liyuan, a famous folk singer, in 1987, and their daughter was born in 1992. By 2007 he was party secretary of Shanghai, the country's commercial capital, and in the same year he was elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's top body, and named vice president. The path to the top was now open, and in 2012, at the party's eighteenth congress, he became general secretary.

2. Taking power: the anti-corruption campaign

When Xi took power in November 2012, the Communist Party faced a crisis of legitimacy. Corruption was widespread, and the case of Bo Xilai, a charismatic party leader in Chongqing who was removed from office and later imprisoned for corruption and abuse of power, had exposed deep divisions at the top. Xi's response was a sweeping anti-corruption campaign, announced with the slogan of catching both tigers and flies — senior officials and low-level cadres alike. Over the following decade, the campaign investigated and punished more than a million officials, including generals, ministers and provincial leaders, among them Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2015.

The campaign's supporters describe it as a genuine effort to clean up a party that had lost the trust of the public, and as a necessary step to restore discipline. The campaign's critics argue that it has also served as a tool for removing Xi's rivals and consolidating his power, and they note that the investigations were conducted by the party itself, without independent courts. Both things can be true at once: the campaign did punish real corruption, and it did remove people who might have challenged Xi. The result was a party that was more disciplined and more fearful, and a leader whose authority was unchallenged.

Xi also moved to centralise power in his own hands. He created new leading groups and commissions that he chaired, taking control of areas that had previously been managed by other leaders, including the military, foreign affairs and the economy. In 2018 the constitution was amended to remove the two-term limit on the presidency, and in 2022 he was re-elected as party general secretary for a third term, breaking the convention that leaders served two terms. In March 2023 the National People's Congress re-elected him as president for a third term, with all 2,952 votes cast in his favour. He is now the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, and the party has written his ideas, known as Xi Jinping Thought, into its constitution.

3. The Chinese Dream and national rejuvenation

Xi's central idea is the Chinese Dream, a slogan he introduced in 2012 for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The idea is that China, after a century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, should become a strong, prosperous and respected country, achieving a moderately prosperous society and, by the middle of the century, a modern socialist country that is a world leader. The Chinese Dream is presented as a collective aspiration, shared by all Chinese people, and it is deliberately vague about the details, which allows it to appeal to different groups. It is also a claim about history: that China's rise is the restoration of a natural order, not the rise of a new power.

The idea has been put into practice in several ways. The Made in China 2025 plan, launched in 2015, aims to make China a leader in advanced manufacturing, including robotics, electric vehicles and semiconductors. The Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, is a programme of infrastructure investment and trade links connecting China with Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, and it is the largest infrastructure project in history. The programme has built ports, railways and roads in dozens of countries, and it has been described by its supporters as a new model of development cooperation. Its critics describe it as a tool of Chinese influence and a source of debt for participating countries, and several projects have been renegotiated or cancelled.

Xi's vision also includes a stronger role for the state in the economy. After a period in which private technology companies grew rapidly, the government imposed new regulations on the sector, including fines and restrictions on companies such as Alibaba and Tencent, and a crackdown on private tutoring and on the video game industry. The campaign, described as common prosperity, was presented as an effort to reduce inequality and to bring private enterprise into line with the party's goals. Its supporters say it corrected excesses; its critics say it damaged confidence and slowed growth. The debate over the campaign reflects a larger question about Xi's economic model: whether the party can direct the economy more closely without losing the dynamism that made China rich.

4. Governing China: control and technology

Under Xi, the Chinese state has become more controlled and more technologically sophisticated. The party has tightened its grip on the media, on universities, on religious organisations and on civil society, and it has used technology to monitor the population in ways that were not possible a decade ago. The social credit system, which rates citizens and businesses on their behaviour, and the extensive use of facial recognition and surveillance cameras, have drawn international criticism, and the Chinese government describes them as tools for public safety and social order. The system is most visible in Xinjiang, where the government has detained large numbers of Uyghur Muslims in what it calls re-education camps, a policy that has been described by the United Nations and by several governments as a serious violation of human rights, and that the Chinese government describes as a counter-terrorism measure.

The control extends to Hong Kong, where a national security law imposed in 2020 has restricted protests and political opposition, and to Taiwan, which China claims as its territory and which Xi has said must eventually be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. The pressure on Taiwan has increased under Xi, with military exercises and diplomatic isolation, and the island's status is now one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the world. The United States has said it will help Taiwan defend itself, and the risk of a conflict, though still low, is taken seriously by military planners on all sides.

At the same time, Xi has overseen real achievements. China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, a claim that is supported by the World Bank, and it has built the world's largest high-speed rail network, its largest navy, and a space programme that has landed a rover on the far side of the Moon. The country has become the world's largest exporter and the largest market for electric vehicles, and its companies lead in several areas of technology. These achievements are the foundation of Xi's claim that the Chinese model works, and they are the reason his leadership retains support inside China even as it draws criticism abroad.

5. China and the world: assertiveness and the Belt and Road

Xi's foreign policy is more assertive than that of his predecessors. Where Deng Xiaoping advised China to hide its strength and bide its time, Xi has argued that China should take a central role in world affairs. The Belt and Road Initiative is the most visible expression of this, but it is accompanied by a more active diplomacy: China has built military bases in the South China Sea, expanded its navy, and presented itself as an alternative partner to countries that are dissatisfied with the West. The relationship with Russia has deepened, particularly after the invasion of Ukraine, and Xi and Vladimir Putin have described their partnership as having no limits, though China has not supplied Russia with weapons directly and has presented itself as a potential peacemaker.

The relationship with the United States is the most important and the most difficult. The two countries are deeply interdependent economically, but they are also rivals in technology, in the Pacific, and in the rules of the world order. The United States has imposed restrictions on the export of advanced semiconductors to China, and China has responded with its own restrictions on rare earth minerals. The competition is sometimes described as a new Cold War, though the two economies are far more intertwined than the United States and the Soviet Union ever were. Xi has said that the two countries should find a way to coexist, and the two sides have held summits, but the underlying rivalry has not eased.

China's rise under Xi has also changed the debate about development. For decades, the Western model of democracy and free markets was presented as the only path to prosperity. China's success under a one-party state has challenged that assumption, and its Belt and Road Initiative has offered an alternative to countries that want infrastructure without the conditions that Western lenders attach. The supporters of the Chinese model argue that it delivers results faster; its critics argue that it comes at the cost of freedom and that its debts create dependence. The debate is unresolved, and it will shape the politics of the developing world for decades.

6. How Xi is judged: two views

Inside China, Xi is presented as a strong and incorruptible leader who restored the party's discipline, lifted the country out of poverty, and made China respected in the world. The state media emphasise his visits to poor villages, his speeches on the Chinese Dream, and his role in the country's achievements. Dissent is restricted, and public criticism of Xi is not permitted, so the domestic view is necessarily incomplete. But there is also genuine support: many Chinese people value stability and prosperity, and they credit Xi with delivering both. The anti-corruption campaign was popular, and the country's rise is a source of national pride.

Outside China, the judgement is more critical. Western governments and human rights organisations point to the treatment of the Uyghurs, the crackdown in Hong Kong, the surveillance state, and the pressure on Taiwan, and they describe Xi as an authoritarian leader who has dismantled the reforms that made China more open. Economists point to the slowing of growth, the property crisis, and the damage done to private enterprise by the regulatory campaigns. These criticisms are real, and they are supported by evidence, but they are also shaped by the rivalry between China and the West, and they are sometimes overstated by those who have an interest in presenting China as a threat.

A balanced assessment must hold both views together. Xi has centralised power, restricted freedoms, and made China more assertive, and these are facts that are documented by independent sources. He has also overseen a period of economic growth and poverty reduction that is unmatched in history, and he has given China a sense of purpose and direction that it lacked in the 2000s. Whether the achievements outweigh the costs is a question that will be answered by the future, and by the Chinese people themselves, when they are free to judge it.

7. Legacy and the future of China

Xi's legacy is still being written, but its outlines are clear. He has changed the Chinese Communist Party, making it more disciplined and more centralised, and he has changed China's place in the world, making it a more active and assertive power. He has also changed the terms of the debate about development, showing that a one-party state can deliver prosperity and technological progress. These changes are likely to endure, whatever happens next, because they are embedded in institutions and in the expectations of a generation of officials.

The open questions are about the economy and the succession. China's growth has slowed, its population is ageing and shrinking, and its property sector is in crisis. The model that delivered rapid growth — investment in infrastructure and exports — is running out of room, and the transition to a model based on consumption and innovation is difficult. The succession is also uncertain: Xi has not named a successor, and the party's norms for a peaceful transfer of power have been weakened by the removal of term limits. A transition, when it comes, will be a moment of risk for China and for the world.

For readers who want to understand China, the most useful next step is to compare Xi with his predecessors and with the other leaders of the present day. The biography on this site gives the verified facts of his life; the articles linked below place him among the other leaders who have shaped the modern world, from Mao Zedong to Vladimir Putin, and show how his rule fits into the longer history of China.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Xi Jinping
• Wikipedia — Xi Jinping
• EBSCO Research Starters — Xi Jinping
• Channel News Asia — Xi declared president for a historic third term

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• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.