The thoughts of Chairman Xi – in digestible form

While giving a talk on China I was asked an unusual question: ‘What is the one word you would use to describe China?’ By China we mean of course the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and, more specifically, Xi Jinping. My reply was: ‘Solipsistic.’

Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, have produced a study in solipsism, and a mighty fine one. Xi and the CCP are solipsistic in the vulgar rather than true philosophical sense. They are supremely self-centred in their belief that the external world should exist or conduct itself only in so far as it reflects the CCP’s reality.

Understanding Xi’s political thought is vital. Barring premature death or economic catastrophe, he will be shaping China and thereby influencing the world for the coming decades. Tsang and Cheung have done the hard work for us by ‘munching rhinoceros sausage’, as the sinologist Simon Leys described reading CCP documents. They have read the corpus of Xi’s books and speeches and ‘swallowed bucketfuls of sawdust’ (Leys again). From that they have abstracted, laid out and explained with great clarity the man’s aims and methods. His thought is illuminated in seven chapters, looking at the past decade and focussing on politics, ideological guidance, governance, social control, economic management and foreign policy. The final chapter spells out the future implications for China and the world.

This book is the most surefooted guide you will find to the mind-numbing and at times faintly comical language in which the CCP clothes its ideology and actions. Phrases such as ‘community with a shared future for mankind’, ‘the two establishments and two safeguards’, the ‘China dream of national rejuvenation’ sound fairly meaningless, but they are not.