Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
As a young man at the time of the Cultural Revolution, Xi Jinping endured more than a dozen violent public humiliations because of his status as a “princeling” – the son of a purged ally of Mao Zedong.
As China’s president he’s pulled the country to the Marxist left (the state rules the economy), the Leninist left (the party and its paramount leader rules the state) and the nationalist right (watch out, Rest of World).
These are morsels picked out by James Kynge in his review for the FT of Michael Sheridan’s The Red Emperor and Kevin Rudd’s On Xi Jinping, two new books on the second-most powerful person in the world published just in time for the next US president to read them.
Both authors are serious experts. Both agree Xi is on a mission to use the power he’s accumulated inside China to gain even more of it abroad.
