Will Xi Jinping build on Deng Xiaoping’s legacy – or unravel it?

Rather than dictatorship, the Chinese president’s first-term record reveals a charismatic leader whose every action appears aimed at sustaining collective authority

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A jade plaque with a picture of Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan below the words ‘China Dream’. Photo: EPA

Published: 6:00pm, 17 Oct 2017Updated: 8:27pm, 20 Nov 2017

Ten years ago, as early autumn set in and the Communist Party of China prepared to convene its 17th National Congress in Beijing, the names of two Lis – Liaoning party chief Li Keqiang and Jiangsu party chief Li Yuanchao – were making the rounds as odds-on favourites to emerge from the scrum of candidates to be anointed supreme leader-in-waiting of the party’s Fifth Generation.

Newly appointed party chief of Shanghai, Xi Jinping, was not expected to contend for the post. He had just been elevated to his position in spring 2007, was expected to continue serving as Shanghai party chief, and there was no prior precedent of a regionally based leader serving concurrently on the party’s Politburo Standing Committee – the party’s highest decision-making organ.

By mid-autumn, the script had been re-written.

Meteoric rise: Chinese President Xi Jinping. Photo: Xinhua

In the ‘open audition’ selection process at the party congress for the 25-member Politburo, which for the first time allowed all Central Committee members to vote from a wider pool of candidates drawn from provincial and ministerial-level cadres, Xi won the most support.

The day after the National Congress, at the First Plenum of the party’s 17th Central Committee, Xi was selected as the sixth-ranking member of the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee and executive secretary of the party’s Secretariat. Later that December, he was appointed president of the Central Party School – mirroring the path that Hu Jintao had taken during his elevation to the supreme leader-in-waiting position in the late-1990s.