China’s New First Couple

This WSJ piece profiles the presumptive next leader of China, XI Jinping. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577186992329708730.html  Among other things, we learn that his father was purged by Mao, and that Xi spent his teenage years living in a cave during the Cultural Revolution acquiring proletarian values (and learning to master his resentments).  Deng Xiaoping rehabilitated his father, who eventually helped launch China’s economic revolution in the first “Special Economic Zone” in Guangzhou.

Unlike China’s colorless present leadership, who are engineers, Xi was a biochemist (which means that he’s probably smarter), and married a glamorous Chinese singer, who is also a Major General in the Peoples Liberation Army (!!), Peng Liyuan. His last posting before being sent to Beijing was as party boss in one of China’s most freewheeling coastal provinces, Zhejiang Province, where he presided over an explosive economic expansion.  This is a formidable person with broad bandwidth, charisma and intelligence. 

No-one has the faintest idea of how Xi will govern,and how he will deal with the volcanic instability of China’s economic growth and its political consequences. It is hard to imagine Xi leading a crackdown on entrepreneurs (since he himself was jailed three times during the Cultural Revolution).  He might be just the person to crack down, however, on local party corruption which has damaged the legitimacy of the Party.  

While we decide which moderate technocrat will lead the US for the next four years, China appears to be leaning forward.  Xi visits the US on February 15.