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Xi’s past is likely to counsel caution
Rising Chinese leader paid price for privilege
BY KEITH B. RICHBURG IN BEIJING
F
or China’s leader-in- waiting, Xi Jinping, growing up as the son of a prominent revolution- ary brought more pain
thanprivilege. His father — Xi Zhongxun, a
contemporary ofMaoZedong and Deng Xiaoping — lost out in a power struggle in 1963 and was banished and later jailed. As a teenager, Xi had to leave school and work in the fields doing farm labor for sevenyears. Ultimately, it was the younger
Xi’s survival instincts that helped himnavigate the shifting currents and competing blocs of the mod- ern-day Chinese Communist Par- ty. He succeeded to the point where he stands ready to become China’s next leader, if all goes ac- cording to a carefully rafted suc- cessionplan. What is known aboutXi’s back-
groundsuggeststhatheisunlikely tobeaboldorcommandingleader in themold ofMao, Deng or even the gregarious Jiang Zemin, who used to surprise hisWesternhosts by singingpopular showtunes. Rather, for reasons rooted in
biography as well as politics, Xi is more likely to prove cautious and bureaucratic, presiding over a col- lective leadership with a style more like thatof the currentpresi- dent,Hu Jintao, according to aca- demics, party officials and others whostudy theparty’s innerworks. “I think he has learned how to
survive,” saidZhangLifan, ahisto- rianwho has studied the Commu- nist Party and whose father was a friend and ally of Xi’s father. “In his childhood,Xi Jinping suffered a lot. All of this experience greatly affectedhim.’’ Xi’s role as heir apparent toHu
was cementedlastweekend,when the Central Committee of the Communist Party elevated Xi, 57, to vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission, which oversees the People’s Liber- ation Army. He would replace Hu as party secretary in 2012 and as
president the following year. As the son of a former revolu-
tionary, Xi (pronounced “she”) is among a generation of Chinese officials known as “princelings.” They are sometimes described as having “royal blood,” meaning they are descended fromprivilege andwear their leadership roles as comfortably and effortlessly as a well-tailored Western suit. They are often described as polar oppo- sites of another group, the “tuan- pai,” who came from humbler backgrounds andwhose ranks in- cludeHuandthe currentpremier, WenJiabao. Butonethingthatmanyprince-
lings share is that their parents sufferedduringtheCulturalRevo- lution and the various intraparty power struggles of the past. Take, for instance, Bo Xilai, a politburo member and a party chief in Chongqing. His father, Bo Yibo, was imprisonedfor 15 yearsunder harsh conditions, and hismother was beaten to death. Bo Xilai was himself jailed as a teenager. And Liu Yuan, an army general, is the sonofLiuShaoqi,China’sonetime head-of-state, who was labeled a “capitalist roader” and removed. The father died under harsh con- ditions. Those early Cultural Revolu-
tion experiences, analysts said, have probably caused the prince- lings to learn, above all, how to maintain power, move cautiously andavoidmakingenemies. “Iatea lotmorebitterness thanmostpeo- ple,”Xi toldChina ParentingMag- azine in 1996, in one of the few knowninterviews inwhichhedis- cussedhispast. Cheng Li, researcher with the
Brookings Institution, refers to the current Chinese leadership as a “team of rivals,” borrowing a popular phrase used often to de- scribePresidentObama’sCabinet. “Xi Jinping is very low-profile
and cautious, which might have some connectionwith his past ex- perience in the 1960s when his fatherwaskickedoutof thepower center,” said Li Datong, a Beijing- based political commentator. “He actually did not enjoymany bene- fits assumed to be extended to the
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2010
ANDY WONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS Chinese PresidentHu Jintao, left, chatted with Vice President Xi Jinping after the closing ceremony of theNational People’s Congress.
‘princelings’ inthose times.” Li calledXi “very conservative.” Xi began his party work at a
relativelylowlevel,slowlyandme- thodically working his way up throughthesystemfromthecoun- ty level to theprovincial level. Yan Huai, a retired former offi-
cial of the Communist Party’s now-disbanded Young Cadres Bu- reau, said he did an assessment of Xi’s work as a “young cadre” in 1983 in Zhengding county of He- bei province. After interviewing localofficials,Yansaidhereported at the time: “Xi Jinping is open- minded, knows the local situation well, works very hard and solidly, inadown-to-earthway.” In an interview, Yan said Xi, in
Hebeiprovince, “spentmost ofhis timeonworking.”Xiwaseducated — he studied chemistry at Tsin- ghua University — but he was serving ina largely rural,undevel- oped province, where most local officials had little or no schooling. “Henot onlyworkedhardbut also was good at expressing his own ideas or opinions,”Yansaid. Yan recalled one instancewhen
Xi pushed an idea over the objec- tions of the locals in Zhengding.A
thathasbecomenotorious for cor- ruption. One question many ask is
JANERIK HENRIKSSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Parents of Xi and other “princelings” suffered in power struggles. FromHebei,Xiwent on to Fuji-
television company wanted to set upoperations inthecountytofilm a series based on theChinese clas- sic “A Dream of Red Mansions.” Many of the local officials thought that it was a frivolous waste of money and that the government funds should be used to advance agriculture.ButXi sawtheproject as thepotential startingpoint fora new industry forHebei to drawin tourists andother filmprojects. “Fromthatexample,wecameto
know that Xi was a young cadre supporting new ideas and who daredto trynewthings,”Yansaid.
an province,where he held a vari- ety of local and provincial posts before becoming governor. He presided over the opening of Fuji- anto foreigninvestment fromTai- wanacross theTaiwanStrait.Heis considered a capable,market-ori- entedeconomicmanager. In Fujian, and later in Shang-
hai, where he held the top party post forafewmonths,Ximovedto leadership positions after party officials became embroiled in scandal. That gave him a reputa- tion as a “Mr. Clean” in the party
whether Xi, once in power,might choose to emulate his father, who was knownas apolitical reformer. Rehabilitated by Deng after the CulturalRevolution,XiZhongxun becameacloseallyofHuYaobang, the reformist who was purged from power in 1987 and whose death two years later started the demonstrations that led to the Ti- ananmen Square pro-democracy movement. XiZhongxunfelloutof favor for
opposing the army’s use of force against the students at Tianan- men. Will Xi the son follow the path
of the father? “Hemust knowthat if the party
doesn’t change and keeps on the same road as now, then the party cannot be sustained,” said Zhang, thehistorian. “Butwhenhe finally wears the crown, it won’t be just himwhodecides.”
richburgk@washpost.com
ResearchersWang Juan and Liu Liu contributed to this report.
Taliban launch attack on U.N. compound in western Afghanistan BY JOSHUA PARTLOW
kandahar, afghanistan — The Taliban launched a midday assault on the United Nations headquarters in western Afghan- istan on Saturday, crashing a car bomb into a compound gate to create an opening for suicide bombers disguised as women, according to U.N. and Afghan officials. The attack was a startling re-
minder of the Taliban’s readiness to strike at the symbols of foreign presence in Afghanistan, in this
case a heavily fortified facility in the relatively peaceful city of Herat, near the Iranian border. Although two Afghan policemen were injured, the attack largely failed, as U.N. guards and Afghan security forces were able to kill the insurgents.NoU.N. personnel were hurt. A thinned-out weekend staff
was manning the U.N. offices when the attackers launched rocket-propelled grenades at the compound just before noon and rammeda car bomb into the back gate, U.S. and Afghan officials said. At least three other insur-
gents, each hiding a suicide vest under a burqa, the head-to-toe cloak worn by many Afghan women, managed to get through the gate before being killed by either guards or police, the offi- cials said. “This is quite significant,” one
U.N. official said. “There was no such direct attack here, as far as I know, for a long time.” It was the most serious attack
on a U.N. facility since October 2009, when insurgents stormed a U.N. guesthouse in Kabul and killed several members of the foreign staff there, prompting the
mission to evacuate many em- ployees, change housing arrange- ments and bolster security. After Saturday’s violence, the
U.N. staff plans to relocate until its offices can be repaired and fortified but said operations in Herat will be unaffected. “The United Nations will con-
tinue to maintain its presence and programs in Herat for the benefit of the population in need and in support of the Afghan authorities,” the mission said in a statement. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a New York Times photographer,
DIGEST HAITI
Cholera spreading closer to capital An outbreak of cholera has ex-
panded beyond a rural valley in centralHaiti, intensifyingworries that thedisease couldreachsqual- id camps that house hundreds of thousands of earthquake survi- vors living in unsanitary condi- tions in the capital, Port-au- Prince. By Saturday, more than 200
people were confirmed dead in the Caribbean nation’s worst health crisis since the Jan. 12 earthquake, and authorities said more than2,000were sick. The cholera outbreak has been
centered in the Artibonite region, but at least five cases were con- firmed in Arcahaie, a town closer to Port-au-Prince, and four more cases were reported in Limbe, a smallnorthernmunicipality. The sick also include 50 in-
mates at a prison in Mirebalais, just north of the capital, health officials said.
—AssociatedPress TURKEY
Far-right parties oppose E.U. entry Several far-right parties that
object to Turkish membership in the European Union said Satur- day that theywillpushfor thebloc
to hold a referendum on the sub- ject. Turkey beganaccessiontalks in
2005 but hasmade little progress, mostly because of a dispute over Cyprus — an E.U. member that is divided between the ethnicGreek southandTurkishnorth. Austrian Freedom Party chief
Heinz-Christian Strache and members of Belgium’s nationalist Flemish Interest Party, alongwith the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People’s Party, among oth- ers, said that Turkey has no place inEuropeandthat citizens should be allowed to weigh in on the matter. Thedevelopment comesamida
resurgence of support for right- wing parties across the continent. —AssociatedPress
RUSSIA
Six killed in violence inNorth Caucasus Acarbombandtwopoliceraids
killed six people and wounded seven in Russia’s volatile North CaucasusregionSaturday,author- ities said. In the republic of Dagestan, a
suicidebomber inacar failedinan attempt to attack a police dormi- tory in the town of Khasavyurt, but a police officer was killed alongwiththe bomber. In the village of Komsomol-
skoye, also in Dagestan, two sus- pectedmilitantswere holed up in
a house early Saturday when po- lice attacked, killing bothof them. Andintherepublicof Ingushet-
ia, police shot and killed twomili- tants in a car chase, police said, adding that the men were later identified as beingwanted on ter- rorismcharges. Islamist insurgents advocating an independent sharia state have
spread across Russia’s predomi- nantlyMuslimNorthCaucasusaf- ter two separatist wars in Chech- nya. The region suffers near-daily violence linked to the insurgency. —AssociatedPress
WeakenedstormsystemhitsChi- na:TyphoonMegipoundedsouth- ern China’s Fujian province with
SPAIN
U.S. swimmer dies in race in UAE: Fran Crippen, a medal-winning open-water swimmer on the U.S. national team, told his coach he wasn’t feeling well late in a race before he died Saturday in the United Arab Emirates. The 26- year-old from Philadelphia was competing in the FINA OpenWa- ter 10-kilometerWorld Cup in Fu- jairah, south ofDubai, but did not finish andwas found in thewater two hours later, according to SwimmingWorld.
American al-Qaeda figure calls for attacks: A U.S.-born spokes- man for al-Qaeda urged Muslims living in the United States and Europe to carry out attacks there, calling it an obligation. In a 48- minute video posted on militant Web sites,AdamGadahn directed his appeal toMuslimimmigrants in what he called the “miserable suburbs”ofParis,LondonandDe- troit as well as those traveling to theWest to study orwork.
JON NAZCA/REUTERS
Awoman paints a tombstone at Casabermeja cemetery, near the Spanish city ofMalaga, in preparation for All Saints’ Day onNov. 1, a Catholic holiday that includes visiting the graves of loved ones.
heavy rain Saturday but was downgraded to a strong tropical storm,withwindsofupto67mph. Meanwhile, searchers in Taiwan found mangled vehicle parts thought to be froma bus carrying 19 Chinese tourists that disap- peared when typhoon rains trig- geredmudslidesonthe island, the transportminister said.
Baby dies, 10 injured after fall from window in France: A 4- month-old baby died after he and 10 other people fell from a third- storyapartmentwindowinsubur- ban Paris. The survivors—adults andseveral children, allofAfrican origin—were hospitalized. Itwas unclear whether the victims jumped on purpose or were forced, anofficial said.
—Fromnews services
Joao Silva, suffered serious leg injuries Saturday when he steppedonaminewhileonpatrol with U.S. troops in Kandahar province’s Arghandab River val- ley.
Silva, a veteran war photogra-
pher from Lisbon who lives in South Africa, was taken for treat- ment to Kandahar Airfield, the nearest large NATO military base, and was expected to be flown to Germany for further care. The Arghandab valley is the
site of one of the most important U.S. military efforts against the
Taliban. The lush, scenic area has long been contested by the Tali- ban, and U.S. and Afghan forces have recently intensified their efforts there. In an interview Friday, Gen.
David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Af- ghanistan, said of the Arghandab that “the bulk of it has been cleared” of insurgents, but added: “There’s certainly still Taliban in there that have to be rooted out.”
partlowj@washpost.com
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
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