A newly published biography of Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002), offers insights into the formative years of the current Chinese leader.
According to author Joseph Torigian, Xi Zhongxun, who served as a Vice Premier of China from 1959, employed physical discipline as a parenting method, common for his generation. He was described as a strict disciplinarian who actively sought to prevent his children from growing up with a sense of privilege.
An illustrative anecdote, as recounted by Xi Jinping himself, details the fear he experienced as a child of being awakened at night by his father to bathe in water already used. Xi Zhongxun believed it wasteful to use water only once and would therefore rouse his sleeping son and younger brother for this purpose.
This early-learned resilience, the biography suggests, continues to influence Xi Jinping’s political ideology. A particularly impactful experience occurred around the age of thirteen during the Cultural Revolution. Xi Zhongxun had been branded a traitor for alleged plotting against Mao Zedong. At a “struggle session” held at the Party School in Peking, the young Xi Jinping was forced to publicly denounce his father on stage, while his mother was present in the audience. As the crowd chanted slogans calling for his condemnation, Torigian reports, his mother was compelled to join in.
Despite the suffering inflicted upon his family by the Communist Party, Xi Jinping has maintained his loyalty to it. However, as a leader, he exhibits a more authoritarian style – a departure from the relatively liberal views held by his father after his political rehabilitation in the late 1970s. Torigian quotes a Chinese intellectual stating that Xi Jinping is “not Xi Zhongxun’s son, but Mao Zedong’s grandson” suggesting a deeper ideological alignment with the founding leader of the People’s Republic of China.