Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The Man from Shaanxi


Shaanxi Province is the cradle of Chinese civilization, where the first consolidation of China occurred in 221 BC and where the legendary Terra Cotta Soldiers can be found in the regional capital of Xian, once also the capital of early China. Confucius served his dukes here and wrote his famous analects circa 600 BC. The Mandarin dialect spoken in this heartland is considered to be the purest in all of China. Shaanxi is a fertile land in the middle reaches of the Yalu River, pretty much in the middle of the Middle Kingdom, the Peoples Republic. And Fuping County is in the center of Shaanxi. It’s farm country, perhaps even China’s Iowa, albeit mountainous and more verdant.

In 1953, a Xi Jinping (pronounced Zhee Jinping) was born in Fuping. “He was the youngest son of Xi Zhongxun [pronounced Zhee Zongshun], one of the founders of the Communist guerrilla movement in Shaanxi Province in northern China and former Vice-Premier. At the time his father served as the head of the Communist Party's propaganda department and later Vice-Chairman of the National People’s Congress. When Xi was 10, during the Cultural Revolution, his father was purged and was sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, and jailed in 1968. Without the protection of his father, Xi went to work in Yanchuan County, Yan’an, Shaanxi, in 1969 in Mao Zedong’s Down to the Countryside Movement.” Wikipedia.

15-year-old Xi’s work was as back-breaking as it was humiliating. He lived in a dusty cave for a while, dug ditches and labored in a processing plant that generated methane from pig waste. The stench was overpowering. Eventually, even in this harsh environment, Xi “became the Party branch secretary of the production team. When he left in 1975, he was only 22 years old.” Wikipedia. The Cultural Revolution finally unwound in the mid-1970s, and Xi was able to pursue his formal education. “From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied chemical engineering at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. From 1979 to 1982 he served as secretary for his father's former subordinate Geng Biao, the then vice premier and Secretary-General of the Central Military Commission. This gained Xi some military background.” Wikipedia.

Xi rose through the ranks of the communist hierarchy, serving in four provinces before replacing a much-scandalized Shanghai Party Secretary in 2006, a powerful sign of the Party’s faith in this apparently rapidly rising star. Still Xi didn’t rock the boat and drifted upwards, getting an appointment to the all-powerful nine-person Standing Committee of the Politburo a year later. Of late, Xi has moved up even farther, traveling internationally as a spokesman for China.

While Xi Jinping is a man on the ascent, he has a connection to the average Chinese citizen by virtue of his marriage... and a connection to the United States by reason of his daughter: “Xi married the famous Chinese folk singer Peng Liyuan in 1987, his second marriage. Peng Liyuan, a household name in China, was much better known to the public than Xi until his political elevation. The couple frequently lives apart due to their largely separate lives. They are sometimes considered China's emerging star political couple. They have a daughter named Xi Mingze… who enrolled as a freshman at Harvard University in the Fall of 2010 under a pseudonym… He currently serves as the top-ranking member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of China, the country's Vice President, Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission, President of the Central Party School and the 6th ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China's de facto top power organ.” Wikipedia.

Why does any of this matter? Because Xi Jinping may well become, after the President of the United States, the second most powerful man on earth. At the end of this year, the Chinese leadership will undergo an orderly transition, and while many powerful administrators will continue to exercise great control over their allocated government and economic sectors, 69-year-old Hu Jintao will step down, and if all the tea leaves are proven correct, 58-year-old Xi will take over at the top.

He is frugal, low key and known as a problem-solver who is not particularly interested in the trappings of high office. But most U.S. officials don’t know his private views or whether he will be able to control secondary fiefdoms that have been delegated to others. As he travels across the United States as a guest of state, introducing himself across the land, America will get a first-hand look at the man who may change his country – and the rest of the world – over the next few years.

The issues bubbling to the surface during Xi’s visit include China’s apparent “proclivity to purloin” American trade secrets and intellectual property, the currency and trade imbalance, the Syrian debacle (including the PRC’s veto of UN action again the Assad regime) and likely near-term military issues involving Asian areas where China believes it has more legitimate defense prerogatives than does the U.S. The side trip to see “old friends” (from a 1985 visit) in Muscatine, Iowa helps convey a positive, down-to-earth and accessible Chinese leader, but the big gorillas in the room will continue to dominate Sino-American relations for the foreseeable future. Xi is indeed a man we all need to know and watch.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the immediate fluttering of political butterfly wings may evolve into a powerful political Gulfstream, blowing change from east to west.

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