China widens personality cult around ‘unrivaled helmsman’ Xi
BEIJING (AP) – The village where he labored as a teen has become a shrine, a tree he planted an icon. State media applaud him endlessly, private businessmen praise his speeches and universities are devoting new departments to his theories.
At the start of his second five-year term as leader of China’s ruling Communist Party, Xi Jinping is at the center of China’s most colorful efforts to build a cult of personality since the death of the founder of the People’s Republic, Mao Zedong, in 1976.
Efforts range from the trivial to the borderline hysterical, such as when state broadcaster China Central Television led its evening national news bulletin Friday with more than four minutes of uninterrupted clapping for Xi as he met with adoring citizens.
“I am a servant of the people,” Xi is described as telling an illiterate villager in a profile Friday by the official Xinhua News Agency that ran several thousand words and also hailed him as an “unrivaled helmsman.” It said Xi led over 60 million people out of poverty in his first term, a statistic repeated ad nauseam in state media.
A Russian translator was so engrossed with reading a recent speech by Xi, Xinhua said, that he skipped lunch and dinner just to finish studying it.
“We’re now in a new round of the god-creation movement, similar to the Mao era,” said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based political commentator..
“During the Mao era, many people believed in Mao from the bottom of their hearts,” Zhang said. “But now, this is mainly for effect, to show the leaders their loyalty and protect themselves. It is more of a performance.”
President Donald Trump’s Beijing visit this month also offered an opportunity to cast Xi as a leader of global standing representing an ancient culture reclaiming its place at the top table. Xi and his glamorous songstress wife, Peng Liyuan, hosted the first couple at the ancient Forbidden City palace complex as part of what China described as a “state visit-plus,” topped by the signing of a quarter-trillion dollars in economic arrangements.
Xi’s reappointment as Communist Party general secretary at last month’s twice-a-decade party congress represented an apotheosis of sorts. He was written into the party constitution alongside Mao and Deng Xiaoping, who launched economic reforms in 1979 — cementing his status as China’s most powerful leader since Mao.