What China’s Past Can Tell Us About Xi’s Future

Howard W. French

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Soon after taking power late in 2012, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first trip outside of Beijing was to visit troops in the Guangzhou military region, in the country’s south, where he told recruits that “it is the soul of the military to obey the command of the party without compromise, [and] it is the top priority for the military to be able to fight and win battles.” In another high-profile move eight months later, Xi toured China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, where he delivered much the same message.

A decade later, in retrospect, these seem not only like significant events in themselves, but also fairly reliable signposts about what to expect from China under its new leader: a blunt style and much more assertiveness than the world had been used to under recent Communist Party heads.

The familiar problem with retrospect is that it is not available in real time, and with China’s political system already deeply opaque and growing far more closed under Xi, that means that outsiders have been left with little more than tea leaves to read in their efforts to interpret events in the world’s most populous country.