Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

And first, the backstory

Who is Xi? The mythology begins, according to Edward Wong, writing in The New York Times. From this version, it's clear that in spite of being the son of one of the elite targeted in the Cultural Revolution and being "sent down," Xi (or his family) maintained ties to privilege: his special food rations and going off to university before Mao died.

Tracing the Myth of a Chinese Leader to Its Roots

The cave is dim and narrow and musty. A platform bed covered with a reed mat sits by the door. A green canvas satchel and a lantern hang from two rusty nails on a wall — possessions supposedly left behind by a lanky teenage boy from Beijing sent here four decades ago to do hard labor.

These days, Mr. Xi’s reading materials veer more toward speeches and government planning documents — the vice president of China, age 57, he is expected to take over from Hu Jintao next year as the nation’s top leader. His official biography is being airbrushed...

[The village of] Liangjiahe is the foundation of a by-the-bootstraps creation myth that Mr. Xi has long cultivated. In an essay for a 2003 book Mr. Xi… [u]sing standard Marxist-Leninist-Maoist language… wrote about learning to serve the people…

The village is in a narrow valley about 70 miles from Yan’an, the city in the northern province of Shaanxi that served as the Communist Party’s revolutionary base for 12 years during the Chinese civil war. Mr. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, a native of Shaanxi, helped build the base and became a venerated party leader. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution, and his son was sent here from Beijing at age 15 to toil in a work brigade…

But there were also divides between Mr. Xi and the villagers. Like many other youths sent to the countryside, Mr. Xi had been allocated corn flour rations. The villagers ate corn husks. Mr. Xi cooked in his cave and ate alone…

Mr. Xi led villagers in building small dams to prevent floods and to irrigate crops. He left Liangjiahe in 1975 to attend Tsinghua University in Beijing, an incubator for political leaders...

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Labels: China, history, leadership