Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus the paramount leader of China, since 2012. Xi has also been the president of China since 2013. As a member of the fifth generation of Chinese leadership, Xi is the first CCP general secretary born after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

The son of Chinese communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father's purge during the Cultural Revolution. He lived in a yaodong in the village of Liangjiahe, Shaanxi province, where he joined the CCP after several failed attempts and worked as the local party secretary. After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces. Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, before becoming governor and party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. Following the dismissal of the party secretary of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to replace him for a brief period in 2007. He subsequently joined the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) of the CCP the same year and was the first-ranking secretary of the Central Secretariat in October 2007. In 2008, he was designated as Hu Jintao's presumed successor as paramount leader. Towards this end, Xi was appointed vice president of the PRC and vice chairman of the CMC. He officially received the title of leadership core from the CCP in 2016.

While overseeing China's domestic policy, Xi has introduced far-ranging measures to enforce party discipline and strengthen internal unity. His anti-corruption campaign led to the downfall of prominent incumbent and retired CCP officials, including former PSC member Zhou Yongkang. For the sake of promoting "common prosperity", Xi has enacted a series of policies designed to increase equality, overseen targeted poverty alleviation programs, and directed a broad crackdown in 2021 against the tech and tutoring sectors. Furthermore, he has expanded support for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), advanced military-civil fusion, and attempted to reform China's property sector. Following the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China, he initially presided over a zero-COVID policy from January 2020 to December 2022 before ultimately shifting towards a mitigation strategy.

Xi has pursued a more aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regard to China's relations with the U.S., the nine-dash line in the South China Sea, and the Sino-Indian border dispute. Additionally, for the sake of advancing Chinese economic interests abroad, Xi has sought to expand China's influence in Africa and Eurasia by championing the Belt and Road Initiative. Despite meeting with Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou in 2015, Xi presided over a deterioration in relations between Beijing and Taipei under Ma's successor, Tsai Ing-wen. In 2020, Xi oversaw the passage of a national security law in Hong Kong which clamped down on political opposition in the city, especially pro-democracy activists.

Since coming to power, Xi's tenure has witnessed a significant increase in censorship and mass surveillance, a deterioration in human rights (e.g. the internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang), the rise of a cult of personality around his leadership, and the removal of term limits for the presidency in 2018. Xi's political ideas and principles, known as Xi Jinping Thought, have been incorporated into the party and national constitutions. As the central figure of the fifth generation of leadership of the PRC, Xi has centralized institutional power by taking on multiple positions, including new CCP committees on national security, economic and social reforms, military restructuring and modernization, and the internet. In October 2022, Xi secured a third term as CCP General Secretary, and was re-elected state president for a third term in March 2023.