How Xi Jinping Made His Power Grab: With Stealth, Speed and Guile

Xi married into wealth and connections. He utilized his newfound wealth and power to eliminate or marginalize his enemies while strengthening his allies and bid his time until now. Why now? Chinese students returning from abroad, along with those schooled in China, are now able to get jobs at many of the foreign companies doing business in China, like Apple, Microsoft, Disney and GE, so the concern for student uprisings is at an all time low. Parents are working in the factories making items like Sony clock radios, Ivanka Trump shoes, and Craftsman tools have no time for political dissent. Xi made his power play at the right time of heightened Chinese nationalism. A nationalism Xi nurtured by streamlining the Chinese military and parading new Chinese fighter jets, tanks and missile launchers. Xi further stoked Chinese nationalism by creating military installations in the disputed SCS and uses aggressive tactics in the waters and air space of Taiwan, Vietnam and Japan. Xi is going to be in power for a very long time and the reason why is as simple as three words found across every store shelf in America: Made in China.

I grew up in China during WWII Japanese occupation period. Japanese Emperor was our absentee dictator in occupied China but he was a kind ruler and I did not realize that I was a Japanese slave. Now everyone in China is a slave of Xi Jinping, a good friend of American dictator Donald J. Trump. Sad for Americans. I have been in the U.S. since 1949 but it was just like yesterday. As a Chinese American I am grateful to American leaders and people since Truman administration. If Truman and Dean Acheson had decided to talk to Zhou Enlai in 1949, China may not became a Communist country under the domination of Stalin and Soviet until President Nixon's bold decision to visit China and Mao in Feb. 1972. I hosted a dinner for 6 Chinese governors in 1980 including Xi Jinping's father and the senior Xi was a very humble person. At that time he was the CCP Party secretary of Guangdong Province bordering Hong Kong. I guess Deng Xiaoping needed Xi Zhongxun's help to promote economic reform in South China and Deng was able to carry out his economic reform movement because of Guangdong Province, in fact, I was a visitor to Guagzhou at that time and the entry city to China was Shenzhen a farm village with poor economic situation and now become a most economic successful city in China. Xi Jinping could make himself a permanent president of China but how long the Chinese people will allow him to do that? Chinese people could tolerate a lot but also there is always a limit.

The comment are as usual interesting and useful and I appreciate them, but I think the general comment does not appreciate the accomplishments of China these last 40 years and through the Xi Jinping presidency. For America, thinking of china as a partner would be my hope.

China's never had anything other than an emperor. The people don't really know how to live under anything else. Not sure (when/if) time will make a difference...

seems like noone learnt from the last emperor. lovely movie.

Knowing China's very long history, this is not anything unusual. Further from the Communist point of view "Harmony", that long held virtue is essential for China as it makes its way from its recent past as a rug for Western Powers to step on. Xi will make certain that there is no disruptions that can easily happen with a change at the top. It will be very interesting to watch how this plays out. Our country has dealt with imperial powers for many years so I see it as business as usual.

The problem with unlimited terms is that Xi is going to surround himself with loyal supporters, with consenting voice: Yes-man. Think about the disaster of great-leap in 1958. Mao was not pushing for ridiculous policy as far as he is concerned, because he was told these policies were achievable. He wanted to increase rice/steel production. And he thought the way to accomplish that was to plant more and produce more. His supporter didn't tell him that increasing production has cost. Sometimes, cost is very prohibitive. The result was the disaster. Now I am really worried about Taiwan. I am afraid that his supporter is going to tell him that 'liberating Taiwan' is going to be easy, and it is a right thing to do. And he will be remember as a great man in the history book if he succeeds. He will not hear any dissenting voice.

Xi Jinping is following in the footsteps of many other authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Erdogan, many African leaders such as Kabile... He may be the re-incarnation of Mao Dzedong. Will China's end be same as what Mao did, eliminating 2 million of his own people in the late 40's and 50's?

China does not have a "president." Presidents are elected by the people, even in Iran and Russia. Xi is the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Like Mao. You would think the NY Times would know that.

Personally, I like term limits, especially with the fast pace of modern times. The need for countries to stay competitive and adjust to technical, sociological and cultural changes. More importantly, no matter how great leadership is, history has taught us that long-term leadership often becomes stagnant, myopic and heavy-handed. What's good for the goose is not always good for the gander.

China was nothing close to a democracy before Xi came along, but power-sharing among technocrats was at least a more stable arrangement that provide some self-restraint on the part of regime.

Hey, how close are we to 2030? Oh. Well it has been about 100 years since this world's most powerful nations had dictatorships so it must be that the human animal simply wants to repeat the well-known ignorance of their predecessors.

The backstory here is that China, in public, is admitting that it is preparing for a period of weakness and vulnerability. Is that to be believed? Or is it just the standard excuse for a new Son of Heaven? The difference makes a difference because one implies a temporary centralization, while the other is permanent. Does Xi want to be a Mohammad Bin Salman with more experience because he thinks China needs it right now? Or a latter day Mao because he thinks that should be the natural order of things? And what does the rest of the leadership think? Some insight on these questions would be appreciated NYT?

Dictators for life exist when people are afraid to fight for their freedom. Should our wanna be leader decide on such a course, there will be some 63 million of us at the barricades.

Xi Jinping wants one thing, and one thing only for Communist Red China - and that is 100% domination of the entire Planet. Xi Jinping may have more patience and guile than some World Leaders, but, make no mistake, the man is a bloody dictator. Tell it to Hong Kong. Tell it to the Marine Fishing Rights off of the coast of Viet Nam. Tell it to all Nations on the "South China Sea", where Xi is building phony "Islands" on reefs, and turning them into Military Compounds for refueling Aircraft and Navy Vessels. Tell it to Tibet, where Tibetans are forbidden to speak their own language, or practice their own religion. Fly a Tibetan Flag, or show a picture of the Dali Lama in Tibet, and you go to prison, for a long, long time, in very harsh conditions. How the Chinese People have allowed Xi to be SO repressive is beyond me, but - they have. One would hope, after thousands of their Country Men & Women were slaughtered by the Red Guard in Tiannamen Square, that the Chinese People would rise up, and over-throw this brutal Government. But, they don't - because they know that they will be shot, next. And ... America does "business" with this creep ? That is sick, and wrong. Boycott Chinese goods. Free Tibet !!

And we let them buy our businesses and sell us subsidized goods. Totally incompatible with who we are. Western nations must acknowledge there is moral culpability in doing business with China.

Xi has delivered for his citizens. China is the only country that used globalization to advance the cause of its citizens, sustainably. It bears repeating. The only country. That's why the West is imploding. And that's why comments about what Xi should or shouldn't do are ludicrous. Look around. At Britain. The US. Germany, France, Italy. The West is in turmoil. Our western liberal democracy systems have failed. The evidence abounds, and it is irrefutable. The Chinese model was far, far superior to ours and the "Washington Consensus". That may make some people uncomfortable. But it's a fact. We have absolutely no leverage over Xi, or China. China faces extraordinary challenges in the future. But it is entering the future in a position of strength. The West faces many of the same challenges. And it is profoundly weakened. So we should refrain from criticizing anybody until we find a way to halt the collapse of the West. @Christopher Xi sliced and diced Obama like an onion. @David The question about whether China can "make the transition from an industrial catch-up, copy cat economy to a post-industrial, innovation economy" has been answered. It is already far more innovative in the digital realm than America, it has some of the best entrepreneurs on the planet, its government has a vision for the technological future, and its "emerging giants" have best-in-breed 21st century management structures. We are best-in-breed at digital ads and stock buybacks.

I didn't think the procedure to install Xi as a long-term leader. Maybe people don't read the NY Times? Xi has many decisions to make that are not people friendly, such as cutting off all the old manufacturing which is not only too expensive, but additionally, filling the world full of steel and upsetting trade. He also has to deal with automation taking jobs away from the iron rice bowl. We can only hope Xi is well trained. Isn't his daughter in college in the US? A man has to listen to his daughter or he is in trouble. Always remember Xi is in China, and many things we accept as normal are not the norm in China. China has a long history of building and manufacturing, not to mention Xi remembers the Western unwanted influence in the past couple of hundred years. Best to remember the Chinese are neither Japanese nor Korean, too.

Xi is secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party, and chairman of the military commission: those are the two most powerful positions in China, and neither has term limits. Why then the need to abolish term limits for the presidency, an essentially honorific position? Perhaps because the presidency makes Xi the ceremonial equal of other heads of state, a status necessary for his expansive view of China's role in the world.

The core question is whether the US will allow the Chinese people to decide how they are governed be it through an "authoritarian", "technocratic" or whatever system. Ideally, the fact 80-90% of Chinese are genuinely happy with their current form of government and the benefits it has brought them (see PEW data) would limit the US to just criticizing the Chinese for their folly in not seeing the evident benefits of the clearly superior US system. Unfortunately, given the pattern of US foreign policy since WWII there appears little hope the US can be trusted to stick to just criticising the choices of the clearly either weak or deluded Chinese people and resist the urge to amplify existing US meddling in Chinese internal politics and/or orchestrate/escalate some sort of useful military conflict. When the US inevitably does this, ostensibly, as always, the touted goal will be"democracy promotion" despite the crazy suggestions of such untrustworthy observers as Manuel Noriega and Noam Chomsky who have dared to suggest the real issue is always whether the targeted country was sufficiently supine to US geopolitical and private commercial interests. Shame! Oh well, all those well intentioned forays into Viet Nam, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc... certainly turned out well for the locals and ther rest of the world didn't they? Seriously, most Chinese just hope the US can finally learn to curb the worst instincts of its miiltary industrial complex and just leave them alone.

This action has brought China that much closer to one day engaging in open warfare with the United States. Remember: Warfare between two democracies (that is, countries that practice actual forms of democracy) is quite rare. Wars between democracies and dictatorial superpowers, however, are not.

Will this be good of bad for Vietnam. My gut tells me it will be bad. As China moves away from becoming more democratic, and moves towards becoming more fascist, it will perhaps become more dependent, or willing, to take on outside foreign wars, to distract its people. No one has more to lose in such a development, than the Vietnamese, who have had to repel Chinese invasions and occupations, at least seven times by 1789, when Nguyen Hue and his 200,000 troops deffeated a Qing army of about 300.000. I am pleased that the Trump administration has sent one of its aircraft carriers to visit Vietnam this month, at the deep port of Danang. This is an important message, that we in the United States agree with the Vietnamese, that the South China Sea, or the East Sea in Vietnam, does not belong to China, but should be shared by all the nations that live around it, or send their ships through it. x David Lindsay Jr. is the author of "The Tay Son Rebellion, Historical Fiction of Eighteenth-century Vietnam," and blogs at TheTaySonRebellion.com and InconvenientNewsWorldwide.wordpress.com

Mao conquered China with guns and knives, and Xi is conquring China with backroom deals. Xi might not be beheading chinese citizens like Mao, but Xi is still a dictator.

I'm always amazed why Chinese people would confuse criticism of Xi Jinping as criticism of Chinese. Like, I criticize Stalin and Mao and Trump, what's that got to do with Russians, Chinese, and Americans? Nothing! Let's not confuse owners with employees.

It's a crying and scary shame we don't have someone at the helm of the White House who is Xi's intellectual equal and can parry his many moves at a time when open societies in the U.S. and elsewhere are at such a critical crossroads. Heaven help us as Xi deftly manipulates Trump like the vacuous and clueless puppet he is in the years to come.

Re: Made His Power Grab: With Stealth, Speed and Guile A better head line would be Made His Power Grab: With Skill and Competence The NY Times is misinformed about China. Power ultimately rests on the approval of the people, and in an Internet connected China increasingly so. The party constantly monitors the social media. The vast majority of PRC citizens approve of Xi's policies and approve ot it. That is the secret of his power. For the opposite of the competence of XI, you do not have to look farther than the US

Xi views himself as an historical figure -- like Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, or the first emperor to unify China, Qin Shi Huang. As Michael Pillsbury's book, The Hundred Year Marathon, explains, China has a 100 year policy to dominate earth by roughly 2050. And Xi wants to be the man who completes that historic task. Unless America's democracy becomes more intelligent quickly, Xi may well achieve his goal, and in 30 to 40 years Chinese censorship and Chinese surveillance will dominate our country. Most Americans do not know it, but the Chinese economy is already 10% larger than ours, defined by how much they produce. They are currently growing at 2 to 3 times our rate, and are expected to have an economy at least twice our size in 20 to 30 years -- and even then their wage rate will still be roughly half of ours. They are currently graduating five times as many STEM students as America. Xi 's government is investing $150 billion in the next 5 years -- 7 times the cost of the Manhattan project in current dollars -- to dominate the world's most powerful technology -- artificial intelligence. Xi is arming rapidly. The Chinese have the ability to steal much of our advanced technology and the designs of many of our weapon systems. They can produce weapons at a much lower cost than us. It is time we recognize what a great threat China poses to our democracy. It is time we lead the world's democracy's to prevent Xi from becoming the first emperor of earth.

Anyone who believed that China was a burgeoning democracy just received a wake up call.

I'm not sure having a president for life is a good thing. It seems this is the trend we are heading toward these days.

We must give it to Mr. Xi, he is a smart guy who outsmarted the system by becoming the president-for-life (despot, really), not conducive for ordinary Chinese to expect an improvement on human rights (trampled over and over until now), freedom of expression, and a press allowed to inform the public with integrity, and in as objective a way as possible...instead of state propaganda. The concern is that when an authoritarian regime muzzles constructive criticism and the wishes and needs of it's people, China may shoot it's own foot by suppressing the rich talent of it's people. And that would be an irremediable loss. Instead of strength from it's economic prowess, we would have the destruction of their spirit, of their culture, and the need to advance in a globalized world in a solidarian fashion. And brute force to dominate world affairs, while a police state at home, would be regrettable, an institutionalized violence 'a la Trump' only a crazy loon would accept as normal.

“I think we should give Xi 20 years to accomplish the Chinese dream and give us back a strong China,” said Jiao Yun, a congress delegate from northeast China who is chairman of a coal processing company. “The previous 10-year limit doesn’t mesh with China’s long-term development.” Taking into consideration that Mr Xi is on his way to becoming God (what takes the rest of us so long to realize this?), China will benefit from his enlightened leadership for ever and ever.

Today Chinese population dynamics are vastly different from what it was in the 20th century. Only in 2012 China’s urban population exceeded the rural. Their needs, worries and even dreams are different. They don’t face the same problem as those of their ancestors. Therefore, Mr. Xi’s diagnosis is right: China needs radical changes. His method can be questionable to some in the West. But the age of enlightenment is long behind us. This is the age of relativism, characterized by distrust/dislike towards democracy, universalism and rationalism. Mr. Xi’s way of doing things will be judged by how successful he will be in making China the largest economy and superpower in the world. Not by how he grabbed the power. Sadly, views of Rousseau and his ilk are irrelevant to the present world.

And where does this leave China? One man at the top of 1.3 billion people, who leadership is held in place using extraordinary tools of control and repression? That would appear to be a very brittle foundation on which to build such a large nation, and not sustainable in the long-run.

It is so unfortunate that Xi needs to undo the remarkable achievements of China over the past 30 years. In order to progress, you need a free and open society. You need the influx of new ideas. In the past 10 years, I have watched the Communists tighten their grip on China's citizens. Every word, and now, every thought, is scrutinized by the government. Any challenge is scrubbed from public view to the point that China is kidnapping and jailing citizens from other countries. It has become the country of fear. This saddens me. I had a chance to witness a China that was so vibrant and full of hope. Who knew the 21st century would be the century of totalitarianism?

It is a mistake to regard the developments in China through the prism of Western, Liberal (in the classic sense), Democratic values rather than the more appropriate and traditional Chinese prism of the rise and fall of dynasties. The Party is simply the latest in a long line of Chinese dynasties that have flourished, decayed and ultimately collapsed. The challenge facing the Party Dynasty is to maintain their Mandate from Heaven (ever increasing prosperity) without surrendering the absolute control viewed as being necessary to maintain the dynasty. The real question is whether China can make the transition from an industrial catch-up, copy cat economy to a post-industrial, innovation economy, as Japan and Korea have done, and thus maintain its Mandate from Heaven while trying to control and direct all aspects of life in China. Based upon the experiences of past Communist /Socialist regimes such s Venezuela, Cuba and the Soviet Union, the answer is probably no. Which means the ultimate outcome of Mr. Xi's effort to maintain control will be traditional fate of all of China's dynasty's - collapse and chaos. The only question is: How soon?

China is tremendously totalitarian state, literally 1984 came to existence. That's funny to see, that many politicians in Europe see this terrible oppressive state, real evil empire, as a new substitute to US and leader in world globalization.

As the English sometimes say, this will all end in tears. Mr. Xi may even be sincere and maximally well-intentioned, but soon or late, the reality of controlling the minds and hearts and day-to-day activities of 1.4 billion people will begin to betray , first, strain and then break down completely. In short, there will have to be blood, and history shows that once repression begins to increase, it does not take any backward steps. Every dictatorship begins by introducing efficiency where it ad been lacking. The trains begin to run on time, and outright criminality is reduced. But the history of such centralized rule demonstrates that war is inevitable, if only as a unifying force. The Bolsheviks waged bloody war against the Russian people in service to their dogma, but it was only when their miscalculation with the Hitler alliance led to their Great Patriotic War did the Russian people evince a unified will to fight on to a national victory. This time, the Communists in charge do not even really believe in Marxism-Leninism; they are like atheistic ministers to a dead god. What will motivate China's people now that is really not just some form of fear? Fear is defeated by the onset of desperation. This change in the Constitutional arrangements is not only an inevitable development, but entirely doomed.

Just wait until Jared Kushner gets through with him!

Nobody is vilifying China! The issue here is with a country’s dictator, not the country or her people. Going against a country’s dictator is a way to support the country and her people. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mao, Hitler and Stalin are stale but obvious examples. People are paid 50 cents for each media posting supporting the PRC government, and there is an army of these people that are known as the ‘50-centers’.

How many milliseconds now before DJT shifts his admiration of V. Putin to Xi Jinping? As might a whole range of backroom US political puppet-masters…

If you ever wonder what's so bad about Communism, read this article.

These 40 years China has experienced development that is wonderful and singular and that should be fairly studied so that policies that made for the development can be borrowed by a Nigeria or South Africa or Brazil or Mexico... China is contributing to development from Asia to Africa to Latin America. China has dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese people and the promise is to end poverty by 2020. China plays a constructive role in the United Nations. China is a nation that has been at peace for decades and is intent on remaining at and fostering peace. Why then is the New York Times so intent on vilifying China? There are nations that have term limits for leaders and nations that do not. Why should we vilify China for a domestic change on term limits. There are no term limits on leadership in the United Kingdom.