The rise of Xi Jinping, explained - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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[audience applause]
These are the 7 most powerful men in China.
They represent the top leadership positions of the ruling party...
and their identities are revealed every five years...
at a carefully choreographed political event
called the National Congress.
“China's Communist Party unveiled its new leadership
over the next five years.”
The order of appearance is symbolic.
The first person to emerge
is the head of the party for the next five years.
At the most recent event in October 2022...
that person was Xi Jinping
China's president for the last ten years...
who walked out in the top spot a historic third time
after getting rid of China's presidential term limit
that restricted all his predecessors to two terms.
A signal that he may be planning to stay in power for life.
The world hasn't seen a Chinese leader like this
since Mao Zedong...
the revolutionary founder of the People's Republic of China...
whose ruthless dictatorship
scarred the Chinese people for generations.
Xi has been compared to Mao a lot.
And he clearly draws from Mao's playbook.
But there's something else that connects these two.
When Xi was just a young boy...
Mao ruined his life.
Generations apart, their paths crossed unexpectedly
and a teenage Xi from an elite family in Beijing...
ended up in exile.
Condemned to hard labor in the countryside.
50 years later
Xi is one of the most powerful political figures in the world
and the only leader since Mao
to have unchecked power over China.
So how did he go from being banished in his country...
to taking complete control of it?
[sinister, electronic music]
[music fades]
Xi Jinping's connection to Mao formed
long before Xi was even born.
[dark, pensive music]
It goes back to when a bloody civil war was raging in China.
A group of radical communist revolutionaries, including Mao
gained influence over large swaths of mainland China...
and controlled a communist military called the Red Army...
that fought the Nationalist Party
ruling the Republic of China at the time.
At this point, the Communists were losing bad.
The bulk of their army was pinned down here...
in a communist controlled region originally established by Mao...
now surrounded by Nationalist forces.
And they were running low on food.
So the Red Army decided to launch a bold attack...
to break through the Nationalist forces and evacuate the roughly
130,000 communist soldiers and civilians stuck here.
On October 16th, 1934, they made their move...
and attacked a weaker part of the enemy line.
They broke through.
And even though their numbers quickly dropped
with thousands dying and thousands more
fleeing to the countryside...
around 86,000 stuck together and pushed on.
This was the beginning of a year-long
historic retreat called the Long March.
The journey to establish a new communist base...
far from the Nationalist forces.
Mao, who used to be a military leader
wasn't in charge at this time.
He'd insisted on using guerrilla tactics
which had heavily influenced the Red Army earlier in the war.
But that approach had fallen out of favor and he was demoted.
The Long March changed that.
After escaping the siege here
the Red Army continued to suffer relentless attacks
by the pursuing Nationalist army.
The military leaders of the march
had pushed for a more traditional wartime strategy
of direct confrontation...
rather than Mao's guerrilla tactics.
And the result was catastrophic for the Red Army.
Less than half of the original escape group
survived the first three months alone.
So it was at this first stopping point
where Communist Party leader Zhou Enlai...
handed military leadership back to Mao.
And Mao picked an end point for the march... here.
800 miles away in rural northern China.
But they didn't go straight for it.
Mao led the Red Army deep into the mountains
where he predicted lighter resistance.
And he was right.
But the journey was still brutal.
It was nine more months of nonstop marching
and fighting along this several thousand mile route...
before they ultimately arrived in northern China...
where a guerrilla base led by a communist revolutaionary
named Xi Zhongxun, offered Mao's army refuge...
bringing the Long March to an end.
That man was Xi Jinping's father.
In the end, fewer than 8,000 of the original marchers survived.
Even though thousands died on the Long March
from starvation and fighting and disease...
Mao's leadership was credited
with saving the Red Army from total annihilation.
And he became the de facto head of the party
as well as the military...
entrusted with rebuilding the army
to take on the Nationalist forces for total control of China.
“Wherever and however...
the Red Troops move into battle...
they spread the glory of Mao Zedong.”
This is a good stopping point in the story to talk about how
power in the Chinese Communist Party or CCP works.
Officially, the highest level of authority
is a group called the Central Committee
and is responsible for all of the party's major policy decisions.
Within the Central Committee is a select group of officials
called the Political Bureau or Politburo.
In most Communist parties, like that of the former Soviet Union...
the Politburo represents the most powerful members of the party
besides the General Secretary.
But the Chinese Communist Party has a key distinction
that makes it unique.
It has one more even smaller selection
of top officials who ultimately have the final say.
An elite class of Politburo members called the Politburo Standing Committee.
This group, which includes the General Secretary
holds supreme control over the Central Committee
dictates the will of the party and is in full control
of the Central Military Commission
which oversees China's defense.
Mao's promotion during the Long March landed him here
in the highest position of the military
and the Politburo Standing Committee.
Even though he was considered the de facto head of the party
when the Long March ended in 1935...
he officially became head of the party in 1943.
With both the party and the military under his control...
Mao began to exploit the system to ensure
he remained at the top for the rest of his life.
At Mao's first National Congress
as the official party leader in 1945...
the party introduced a resolution that brought his influence
to a whole new level.
They unified the party around a single understanding of its history...
and declared Mao's political ideology
later called Mao Tse-Tung Thought or Maoism...
as the unquestioned guiding principle
of the Chinese Communist Party.
Basically, Mao's ideas or policy decisions
could no longer be challenged by anyone.
It was here he unveiled his equivalent at the time
of the Politburo Standing Committee.
The four other top party leaders...
all long marchers deeply loyal to Mao.
Like Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai...
who would go on to hold some of the most powerful positions
in the future government.
Four years later, Mao declared final victory for the Communists
in a decades long Chinese civil war
and established a new country:
The People's Republic of China, or PRC.
“Mao Tse-tung, once a lowly party worker...
now assumed the stature of a dominant figure
in all of Eastern Asia.”
But winning a revolution isn't the same as running a country.
Because now that you're running a country
there's all these other things you have to do
like deliver the mail and like build a dam and stuff like that.
You can't possibly have the party do all these things.
So the party set up a government that would take
the policy decisions made by the Politburo Standing Committee
and figure out a way to make them a reality.
And so it evolved to a system where...
the party would make all the important decisions...
and especially the Politburo Standing Committee.
Then, as it is today...
many of these decisions would go to the State Council.
So the State Council was the highest decision-making body
on the state side, led by the Premier of China.
The Premier of China, by the way, is almost always
a member of the Politburo Standing Committee.
One way Mao kept a tight grip on power over the years
was by promoting those loyal to him to top positions
in the party in government.
Whether they had government experience or not.
For example, Zhou Enlai...
the former party leader
who helped Mao rise to power during the Long March...
became China's first premier.
The advantage of that is that they could never challenge him.
The disadvantage of that is
they didn't know what they were doing
and so administration suffered...
policy outcomes suffered.
Long March survivors often became party elites under Mao.
Xi Jinping's father, for example, was appointed
Secretary General of the State Council...
and as the son of a Long Marcher
young Xi was given the informal title of Princeling.
Mao succeeded in never giving up his power during his lifetime.
His unchecked policies resulted in massive famines
and widespread persecution
that cost between 40 and 80 million lives over a span of decades...
and culminated in the disastrous Cultural Revolution.
A violent final attempt from Mao to consolidate his power
and force loyalty to the practice of Maoism.
The idea was to make himself and his ideas eternal.
The way he viewed communist figureheads
like Lenin and Marx before him.
Anyone that didn't fall in line with Mao's ideology
was publicly humiliated...
impoverished...
excluded from society, and, in many cases
executed.
Either at the hands of the army...
or by a militant youth group obsessed with enforcing Maoism:
The Red Guards.
[cheering]
Even those closest to the dictator
weren't safe from his purges during the Cultural Revolution.
High level officials
including members of the Politburo Standing Committee
and Long Marchers...
were removed from their positions.
Liu Shaoqi was denounced as a traitor and died
while imprisoned under harsh conditions.
Mao also removed the Chief of Staff of the Army
and replaced him with a Maoist...
leaving no one left to oppose him in the military.
Mao's handpicked successor
who always appeared loyally by his side
in photos and propaganda posters
died under mysterious circumstances
when his plane crashed as he was fleeing to the Soviet Union.
Mao later denounced him as a traitor.
He denounced Xi's father, too.
This is a photo of Xi senior
being restrained and publicly criticized
by the Red Guards at the height of the Cultural Revolution.
He would remain a prisoner in Beijing for 8 years following this.
With his father purged...
Xi Jinping, 15 at the time
was expelled from his elite school in Beijing
and sent to work in the countryside.
He had to live in a cave and do hard manual labor.
His food was barely enough for
a growing young person.
And Chairman Mao was responsible for all of it.
But then... Mao died.
The Cultural Revolution ended.
His successor was Deng Xiaoping...
one of the Politburo Standing Committee members
who was removed from power during the Cultural Revolution.
Who just before Mao died...
started making a promise to fellow exiled party veterans.
Deng Xiaoping signaled credibly...
to all the surviving Long Marchers
that he wanted to rehabilitate people.
So when Mao died, they all supported the rehabilitation of Deng.
And as soon as Deng was rehabilitated
he went ahead and rehabilitated all these people.
With experienced leadership back in place
the party needed to figure out
how to prevent something like this...
from ever happening again.
In order to undo Mao's cult of personality...
the party introduced a second historical resolution in 1981.
It condemned periods of Mao's rule...
and emphasized a renewed commitment to collective leadership...
vowing to oppose the consolidation of power
around one person moving forward.
The successors to Mao didn't want a dictatorship.
So they divided up these positions
and put them in the hands of different people.
Like Mao, Deng kept tight control
over the Central Military Commission as its chairman...
and held a leadership position in the government.
But was never head of state.
He never held the highest position in the party either.
Instead, he set up a new advisory commission
and served as its chairman...
which allowed him to influence the party's direction...
without positioning himself directly on top of it.
This allowed a power sharing structure
while still making Deng the de facto leader of China
until he stepped down in 1989...
following the Army's massacre of students protesting in Tiananmen Square.
“A protester suddenly ran into the middle of the street
and in front of the oncoming tanks.”
“Anger at Deng Xiaoping, the entire Chinese government...
it had the real feeling of rebellion in the streets of Beijing.”
“People want to fight the military out of their city.”
Deng and his ideology
which moved away from Maoism, set a precedent of sharing power.
He opened up China and established economic ties
with these countries...
and was the first PRC leader to visit the US in 1979.
“Today, we take another step in the historic...
normalization of relations
which we have begun this year.”
Deng's reforms became the foundation
for decades of economic prosperity
that led China to having the world's second largest economy over time...
and being on the verge of becoming the world's next superpower.
“Communism is creating a consumer society.”
“Also reminds you that the standard of living in China is going up.”
“Here... capitalism rules.”
One thing power sharing did lead to...
was a lot of policy innovation
and then some degree of decentralization.
And both of these things helped China's economy enormously.
Which is why this period of economic growth and reform
stretching over roughly 30 years is known as the Deng era.
Whether he wanted to or not, Deng kept his word...
and never tried to consolidate absolute power around himself.
He did end up sharing power.
And that set the stage for power sharing in the party...
until the rise of Xi Jinping.
So what was Xi doing all this time?
[contemplative music]
When Mao died in 1976
Xi was back in Beijing studying communist philosophy...
even though the Chinese Communist Party had ruined Xi's family...
He had joined it.
Just as the Cultural Revolution was winding down.
But why?
Personally, he might begrudge Chairman Mao
for doing all this terrible things to his family...
but I think at this time he also recognized that in the system
of the Chinese Communist Party power is everything.
Without power, you're nothing.
But in order to get that power...
Xi did something unexpected.
He left Beijing.
As his competitors were fiercely competing
with each other in the 1980s and 1990s.
He sort of got out of their way...
and went to the provinces.
He took positions in party leadership
in rural, poor provinces all around China...
where there were no other princelings to compete with.
First, in Hebei, a poor rural province outside of Beijing...
where he easily reached the top spot as party secretary.
Then in Fujian, a heavily militarized region
where top members of the army were stationed.
He moved up the ranks to party secretary here, too.
Before becoming the governor of the province a few years later.
After making powerful friends in the military...
Xi went here... where he once again
assumes the office of party secretary...
and grew his support on the civilian side.
This strategy of moving around
didn't just give Xi a leg up in areas
where competition was slim.
It also gave him credibility...
as a humble, hard working party leader...
and he cultivated a growing group of supporters
who would come back into play years down the line.
It was his last stop and his shortest one
that ultimately got him back to Beijing.
A brief stint in the top party spot in Shanghai in 2007...
where he rehabilitated the city's image
following a high-level corruption scandal.
Xi developed a reputation here
as a prudent leader who toed the party line.
Just 7 months later, he finally returned to Beijing...
having been promoted to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee.
Basically, the people who were deciding on top leadership at the time
they wanted a Princeling.
But they didn't want a princeling
who was too ambitious or too strong.
So Xi Jinping
he was seen as less ambitious
because he was willing to go to the countryside
and work in lower-level positions.
When Xi emerged as the 2007
National Congress and leadership unveiling...
he was one of the 9 most powerful men in the country.
It was at this moment that his strategic climb...
over 17 long years in the countryside paid off.
Big time.
When the General Secretary stepped down in 2012...
Xi emerged at the top spot in the party as China's leader.
Now the elite son of a former revolutionary
turned exiled peasant...
turned party darling...
was poised to seize control of everything.
Like Mao, Xi Jinping believes that rallying around
a single figure is crucial to the party's survival.
Rather than the collective leadership
Deng's reforms had normalized.
So pretty much as soon as Xi Jinping came to power.
He started getting rid of people.
“The news... four top officials removed for taking bribes
was announced on state TV.”
“Xi Jinping has just sacked his foreign minister.”
“Just sacked his defense minister.”
“He sacked a whole lot of other people at the top
of the military establishment.”
“The former security czar
has not been seen in public for more than a year.”
“The nvestigation against Zhou allows the Chinese president
to remove those opposed to his reforms.”
He launched a major anti-corruption campaign...
as soon as he took power in late 2012, early '13...
which led to the arrests of hundreds of senior-level officials
as well as military officers.
These purges targeted Xi's rivals in the party...
whose vacant positions he filled with his own supporters.
After this massive purge...
Xi Jinping was in very tight control over
both the party and also the Chinese military...
thereby making him the most powerful leader
of the Chinese Communist Party since the death of Mao.
That pattern continued in the second term
where he unveiled 5 new faces of the Politburo Standing Committee...
three of them with close personal ties to Xi.
In 2021, Xi pulled off one of his most dramatic acts yet...
to enforce his influence over the Chinese Communist Party.
He introduced a third historic resolution
that unified the party's ideology
around one clear line of thinking:
Xi Jinping Thought.
Xi's personal political ideology...
would now be the core in the party's thinking...
political stance and action.
Basically, Xi Jinping's ideas could no longer be challenged.
And they weren't for many years.
During Xi's first 10 years in power
the size of China's economy more than doubled.
So did average individual income.
So did military spending.
Under his leadership...
China's presence on the world stage has grown too.
Positioning the rising superpower
to take on the role of an aggressor, externally.
Reasserting claims over parts of the South China Sea
Intimidating Taiwan and Tibet
and stripping democratic process in Hong Kong.
Inside its own borders
strict Internet censorship and surveillance are widespread...
and oppression of Uyghurs...
a mostly minority Muslim ethnic group...
is marked by human rights abuses.
But it wasn't until Covid that Xi saw
the first real challenge to his authority.
“Anger in China is growing.”
“Video showing protester is in Xinjiang...
fed up with China's zero Covid rules.”
“The boldest public challenge yet for leader Xi Jinping.”
With these protests all around the country...
and the party's reputation in peril.
Xi reversed the failed policy.
But is now faced with a shaky economy...
and cracks in his unchecked authority.
It was just weeks before the widespread protests
at the 20th National Congress in 2022...
that Xi walked out in the leading position a third time.
He had already locked in the presidency for another five years...
and unveiled a Politburo Standing Committee
completely packed with those loyal to him.
After removing the final senior members of the party
that had ties to his predecessor.
Now there is no one left in party
or military leadership whose ideology differs from Xi.
I don't think anyone can push him out at this point.
I think Xi will be the most powerful leader in China...
as long as he's alive and conscious.
Thanks so much for watching this episode of Atlas.
So many teammates worked on this piece.
A small army of editors, animators, and researchers
helped bring this complicated story into focus.
I especially like to shout out Rajaa...
one of the key researchers on this piece...
who conducted an incredible interview
with our expert Victor Shi.
It takes a lot of resources to make these videos
but we publish our work free to watch here
because we think journalism should be accessible to everyone.
If you believe in keeping journalism free
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go to vox.com/give-now
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Thanks again.