Putinism with Chinese Characteristics: Xi Jinping’s Cult of Personality

The Jamestown Foundation ^ | Dec 2017 | Kevin Carrico

[GoldenState_Rose]

Since 2012, Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping has consolidated more power than any Chinese leader since at least Deng Xiaoping. This consolidation of power has coincided with a growing cult of personality, which portrays Xi as “the right leader at the right time” for China.

Analyses of this cult often make comparisons to that of Mao Zedong...A reexamination of the evolution of the cult of personality around Xi, however, suggests that a far more appropriate point of comparison is with a more recent figure: Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Tellingly, during a meeting between the two leaders in 2013, Xi commented to Putin that “I feel that our personalities are very similar”. Not only are their personalities similar, but Xi Jinping’s cult of personality and the propaganda around him is in fact largely modeled on Putin...the combination of Putin-style bravado with the Chinese surveillance state and military is a potent and potentially dangerous combination.

“The Soviet Union’s today is our tomorrow.” In the six decades since its first articulation, this Mao-era slogan has served as a source of both promise and anxiety.

From 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union has been portrayed in China as a tragedy to be avoided: destabilization, uncertainty, and chaos contrast with the stability and rapid economic growth realized in China during those years under the Party’s leadership. Only with Putin’s rise to power and the attendant return to authoritarianism has the tone of reports shifted, representing Putin as a strong, decisive leader who realizes stability and thus prosperity for his people while also standing up defiantly against “the west."

Chinese state media narratives of both post-Soviet chaos and Putin’s power serve a common interest- rationalizing authoritarian rule as the right choice...