IB History Rise to Power and Early Rule of Xi Jinping Notes

Xi Jinping: Rise to Power and Centralisation of Authority

1. Xi Jinping was born in 1953, the son of revolutionary veteran Xi Zhongxun, a senior CCP leader who was himself purged during the Cultural Revolution. Xi's own family background exposed him to the political violence of the Mao era, and he later spent years labouring in rural Shaanxi during the Cultural Revolution's "sent-down youth" campaign.
2. Xi built his career through provincial administration, holding senior posts in Hebei, Fujian, Zhejiang and Shanghai between the 1980s and 2007, developing a reputation as a competent, non-controversial technocrat and cultivating patronage networks across several regions.
3. Xi joined the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007, positioning him as heir apparent to Hu Jintao. He became CCP general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission in November 2012, and formally assumed the state presidency in March 2013, taking all three top posts more quickly than his immediate predecessors.
4. Xi promoted the "Chinese Dream" of national rejuvenation as his signature ideological theme, framing his leadership around restoring China to a position of global strength and prosperity after what CCP rhetoric described as a "century of humiliation" at the hands of foreign powers.
5. From 2012, Xi launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign targeting both senior "tigers" and lower-level "flies". By 2020 the campaign had investigated or prosecuted more than 1.5 million officials, including former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang and senior generals Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, while also removing potential rivals from Xi's path.

1. Xi centralised policy control by chairing new central leading groups and commissions covering areas including national security, economic reform, cybersecurity and military affairs, bypassing the more collective decision-making style of his immediate predecessors.
2. The People's Liberation Army underwent major restructuring from 2015, replacing the old military region system with new theatre commands and continuing anti-corruption investigations within the officer corps, tightening direct party and personal control over the armed forces.
3. Ideological and social controls tightened under Xi: party education campaigns expanded, and the state increased control over universities, media and civil society organisations, narrowing space for independent commentary and activism that had existed under Hu Jintao.
4. "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" was written into the party constitution at the 19th Party Congress in 2017 and into the state constitution in 2018, placing Xi's name alongside Mao Zedong's as the only leaders to have their personal ideological contributions named in the party charter while in office.
5. Xi announced the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, a global infrastructure and investment programme that became a central pillar of his foreign policy, extending Chinese economic and diplomatic influence across Asia, Africa and Europe.
6. In 2018, the National People's Congress removed the two-term limit on the presidency from the state constitution, allowing Xi to remain head of state beyond the ten-year convention observed by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Domestically, his rule also saw the mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the imposition of a National Security Law in Hong Kong in 2020, which ended the territory's meaningful political autonomy.
7. By the end of his first decade in power, Xi's rule had combined tighter party discipline, an assertive nationalist ideology, expanding global ambition through initiatives such as the Belt and Road, and a marked retreat from the more collective leadership norms established after Mao.