12,000-word Xi homage cements personality cult at top in Beijing

The six-chapter tribute lauds Xi’s record as the Communist Party meets to recommend he remains for five more years.

It runs to 12,000 words, extols President Xi as China’s “man of action” who loves his people as much as his own mother and has been published days before his third term in power is expected to be rubber-stamped.

As if preparing the ground for what is to come, the six-chapter official tribute to Xi, released by the state news agency Xinhau, lauds his record as the leader of a great power who has defeated a pandemic, bested foreign rivals and dragged China into the 21st century, just as the 200-member inner circle of the Communist Party meets to discuss the president’s record and recommend that he remains for another five years.

Critics have said that the work cements a personality cult at the top of Chinese politics and paves the way for Xi, who took power in 2012, to become a “forever president” and dictator for life. China’s leaders traditionally served two five-year terms. Xi altered the constitution in 2018 to remove the limit.

The tribute says that the president, 68, is “a man of determination and action, a man of profound thoughts and feelings, a man who inherited a legacy but dares to innovate and a man who has forward-looking vision and is committed to working tirelessly”, adding that having realised his first goal of building a “prosperous society” he will now focus on his second: that of “national revival”.

China's President Xi Jinping applauding after the result of the vote on changes to Hong Kong's election system was announced during the closing session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The first chapter, called “The party general secretary who loves the masses as he loves his parents”, states: “No matter what his position, Xi Jinping effortlessly mingles with the masses . . . he stands in the rain to have his pictures taken with workers . . . he worries about the sorting of rubbish in his neighbourhood.”

The article came on the eve of an all-important party plenary session, beginning today (Monday), where the 200-member central committee of the Communist Party will consider Xi’s record and recommend his “re-election” to the 20th party congress next year.

“No personality cult in China, that’s reassuring,” tweeted Antoine Bondaz, a researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think tank. “The total personality cult ahead of the plenum of the Communist Party, one year before the 20th congress, may make it possible to justify Xi Jinping’s continuation in power after 2022.”

The central committee will also issue a “resolution” officially reassessing the party’s hundred-year history. Analysts say that this will probably shape China’s politics and society for decades to come, with Xi elevated to the status of a “core leader” alongside Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Last year the party issued its “brief” history, running to 531 pages, more than a quarter of which was dedicated to Xi.

University students displaying the flag of the Communist Party of China to mark the party's 100th anniversary during an opening ceremony of the new semester in Wuhan in China's central Hubei.

Geremie R Barme, a sinologist based in New Zealand, told The New York Times that the resolution would create “a new timescape for China around the Communist Party and Xi in which he is riding the wave of the past towards the future.”

The Xinhua paean states that Xi “is undoubtedly a central figure in navigating the tides of history”, adding: “Without a strong leadership core it will be difficult to form a unified will of the entire party and to achieve unity among the people of all ethnicities. It will be impossible to do anything, much less to create miracles on earth and win ‘great struggles with many new historical characteristics’.”

The Times