From one of the most admired reporters covering China today, a vital new account of the life and political vision of Xi Jinping, the authoritarian leader of the People’s Republic whose hard-edged tactics have set the rising superpower on a collision with Western liberal democracies.
Party of One shatters the many myths that shroud one of the world’s most secretive political organizations and its leader. Many observers misread Xi during his early years in power, projecting their own hopes that he would steer China toward more political openness, rule of law, and pro-market economics. Having masked his beliefs while climbing the party hierarchy, Xi has centralized decision-making powers, encouraged a cult of personality around himself, and moved toward indefinite rule by scrapping presidential term limits—stirring fears of a return to a Mao-style dictatorship. Today, the party of Xi favors political zeal over technical expertise, trumpets its faith in Marxism, and proclaims its reach into every corner of Chinese society with Xi portraits and hammer-and-sickle logos. Under Xi, China has challenged Western preeminence in global affairs and cast its authoritarian system as a model of governance worthy of international emulation.
As a China reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Chun Han Wong has chronicled Xi Jinping’s hard-line strategy for crushing dissent against his strongman rule, his political repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and his increasingly coercive efforts to reel in the island democracy of Taiwan, as well as the domestic and diplomatic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. When the Chinese government refused to renew Wong’s press credentials and forced him to leave mainland China in 2019, he moved to Hong Kong to continue covering Chinese politics and its autocratic turn under Xi. Now, Wong has drawn on his years of firsthand reporting across China—including conversations with party insiders, insights from scholars and diplomats, and analyses of official speeches and documents—to create a lucid and historically rooted account of China’s leader and how he inspires fear and fervor in his party, his nation, and beyond.
“A penetrating and timely unraveling of the personality and impact of a strongman president” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) Party of One explains how the future Xi imagines for China will reshape the future of the entire world.
“A respected journalist combines history, headlines, and personal reflections in a careful analysis of China’s leader-for-life. . . . A penetrating and timely unraveling of the personality and impact of a strongman president.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Meticulously researched . . . Wong is a sharp observer of soft authoritarian power and the apparatus of the absolutist state. . . . The book is particularly strong on Xi’s manipulation of power once he won office, purging generals and cadres, laying waste to the party's rank and file in a supposed campaign against its universal corruption as well as changing the constitution so that he could rule for life. . . . Excessive power, as the book shows, can end up making its holder weak.” —The Sunday Times (UK)
“A thoughtful chronicle of China under Xi . . . Wong has a foreign correspondent’s eye for details illustrating deeper verities, but he never loses sight of the historical context, and often supplements his observations with perceptive digressions into China’s imperial past.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“In a crowded marketplace of books about Xi Jinping’s China, Party of One stands head and shoulders above its competitors. Chun Han Wong has combined rigorous investigative skills with a forensic grasp of an opaque political system to produce an enthralling portrait of the leader, and the party, that sits atop the world's emerging superpower.” —Richard McGregor, author of The Party and Asia’s Reckoning
