Xi: Who, What and Where Next?

During five years in Beijing for The Wall Street Journal, Chun Han Wong emerged as one of the best shoe-leather reporters covering the politics of the high Xi Jinping era. He arrived as China’s anticorruption campaign was still in full swing and was unceremoniously kicked out of the country in 2019 (a tragic mark of distinction among foreign correspondents). Party of One is the book version of his coverage, expanded into a portrait of the

Xi era writ large.

The opening chapter is a useful distillation of the known facts of Xi’s biography. From there, Wong covers a half-dozen policy areas in which Xi has asserted control: corruption, law, economic reform

(or lack thereof), propaganda, ethnic minorities and diplomacy. The final chapter speculates on China after Xi, focusing on the succession dilemma — or nightmare — that he has created in eliminating term limits. Party of One is refreshingly light on ideology, trying to see China, the Chinese Communist Party and Xi as they are rather than judging them through foreigners’ eyes.

The journalistic balance and careful sourcing are the strengths of Wong’s book. He does occasionally issue warnings, like the passage where he speculates that “a twenty-first-century succession crisis in

China … would unleash global shock waves. It may even bring down the People’s Republic.” Even that prediction is hedged, however, and some readers might want a stronger take on whether Xi’s “party of one” experiment can really succeed, atop a party of almost 100 million, running a country of 1.4 billion.

Party of One:

The Rise of Xi Jinping and China’s Superpower

Future

By Chun Han Wong

Simon & Schuster, 2023, 416 pages, $30 (Hardcover)