How a young Xi Jinping dealt with his first political crisis | Live with Lizzi Lee

In this episode of Live with Lizzi Lee:

Eva Dou, the Washington Post’s China reporter, explains her findings this summer during a trip to Fujian, where Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 spent more than 17 years of his young career. Soon after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Xi had penned an essay that would prove relevant several decades later.

Below is a transcript of the video:

Lizzi: Joining me today is Eva Dou, the Washington Post’s China reporter. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Eva: Thanks for having me here today.

Lizzi: Eva, can you please tell me a little more about the backstory of your recent reporting on Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 career in Fujian? How did you and your colleague decide to go to Fujian to find out more about Xi Jinping’s personal history?

Eva: Yeah, sure, of course. We were all preparing for the Party Congress coming up this month. And this is an important moment in Xi Jinping’s career, having finished the first 10 years, which is standard for a Chinese president, and planning to continue on.

And so, with my teammates, we were discussing how do we illustrate this, how do we try to get some insight into China’s leader, and the natural choice for us was Fujian, because this is the province where Xi Jinping spent by far the most time of his career before going to Beijing. He spent more than 17 years in Fujian working his way up from a local official to head of the province.

And during that time, the Tiananmen Square protest did happen in 1989. And this seemed like, yeah, a critical moment for both him and officials across the region, across China at the time. So that was something that we were curious about.

Lizzi: In Fujian, you discovered a lot of firsthand resources as you report in the article. What do we know about Xi Jinping’s early career? And can you please share some of your surprising findings with our audience?

Eva: What we know is that he started out as a local-level official, the chief of the city Ningde, which is not the biggest city in Fujian. During that time, he was in his mid-thirties. That was the time when his career was really starting to take off. And what we did find is sort of interesting speeches and writings. In 1989, when these pro-democracy protests were going on across the country…

They’re mostly remembered as being protests in Beijing because, of course, the ones in Tiananmen were most famous, but it was going on across the country nationwide. Young people were demanding political change. They were demanding accountability from their leaders. So, this was very likely the first major challenge of Xi Jinping’s career, dealing with these protests at a local level and at a national level. It was a challenge for the government.

What we found is, you know, he gave a speech to local journalists shortly before the crackdown where he was arguing for the necessity of controls on the media. And then again, after the crackdown, he wrote this essay in a local literary journal, which is speaking sort of directly to local intellectuals, arguing about why there need to be restrictions on art and literature and kind of drawing the connection directly to political stability in the country.

Lizzi: And Fujian is also important for another reason, which is its proximity to Taiwan. Did Xi Jinping express his views on Taiwan back then? Are there anything that we should be aware of?

Eva: He did it to an extent. And I think it is important to note that for all these topics like censorship and Taiwan, he was only a local official at that time. And there’s only a certain degree that he can have an opinion on that. A lot of times he is expressing sort of the official line.

For Taiwan and Fujian, we did see in some of his writings at the time when he rose to a provincial-level position. He was there during the Taiwan Straits crisis. And, of course, Fujian is right across the strait from Taiwan.

So, there were the missiles that were being fired into the water surrounding Taiwan at the time, as a warning.

There was build-up in military installations and Xi Jinping did express it was important to build up the military presence in the province because he said the threat of Taiwan splitterism. You can see from an early period in his career this was an issue he dealt with directly.

Lizzi: Your article is titled “Xi Jinping’s Quest for Total Control of China Is Just Getting Started.” I know you have spoken to many experts on this topic, but what do you or they generally expect in terms of policy directions after the 20th Party Congress and during Xi Jinping’s third term?

Yeah, of course, no one can know for sure right now. But what we do know is that securing this third term was a challenge for Xi Jinping beforehand. To a certain extent, in the past five years, his policies had to be moderated to gain that sort of internal support in the Party for him to continue longer than other leaders.

And so now he’s gained the support, gained his third term. And it’s commonly believed he does have a bit more freedom now going forward for pursuing his policy objectives.

And I guess the other thing to keep in mind is he’ll be looking towards his legacy as a leader of China who stayed on for these many years.

He’ll be put alongside Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 and Dèng Xiǎopíng 邓小平 for comparisons in history, and so he’s probably going to be keen to have accomplished something significant during his tenure.