PRESIDENT XI Jinping was elected General Secretary of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the committee's first plenary session.
The session, presided over by General Secretary Xi, was attended by 203 members of the 20th CPC Central Committee and 168 alternate members.
The members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee elected at the session are Xi Jinping, Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang and Li Xi. They met the press at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
The 69-yer old Xi vows to lead the country to pursue national rejuvenation through a Chinese path to modernization.
"We shall keep in mind the Party's nature and purpose and our own mission and responsibility, and work diligently in the performance of our duty, to prove worthy of the great trust of the Party and our people," Xi said as he led his colleagues to meet the press, fresh from a Party plenum that elected him general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
In 2012, after assuming the Party's top job, Xi said that he and his colleagues would lead the CPC in striving for national rejuvenation, pursuing a better life for the people, and addressing problems within the Party.
In the past decade, China under his leadership has witnessed historic changes, with its economy more than doubling to 114 trillion yuan (16 trillion U.S. dollars), absolute poverty wiped out and moderate prosperity attained for the country's 1.4 billion people.
It was also a decade of severe challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic, a trade war with the United States and the downward pressure on the economy all posed hurdles for China's development and tested the strength of Xi and the Party he leads.
Bringing about milestone transformations and ushering in a "new era" for socialism with Chinese characteristics, Xi is regarded as the helmsman capable of leading the country in overcoming difficulties and pursuing full modernization.
Stephen Perry, chairman of Britain's 48 Group Club, said everything he has seen in President Xi tells him that Xi's motivation is the people of China, which is very important for China's development at its current stage.
Robert Kuhn, an American scholar who authored the book "How China's Leaders Think," said Xi has an objective and comprehensive understanding of China's current situation, as well as detailed and rational thinking of its future.
Son of Loess Plateau
Xi was born in June 1953 into a revolutionary family. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revered CPC leader. Describing his father as "someone who had devoted himself wholeheartedly to the Chinese people," Xi Jinping said he was greatly inspired by the elder Xi and had pledged to follow in his footsteps.
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| Xi Jinping talks with family members of Shi Basan, a villager at Shibadong Village in Huayuan County in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, central China's Hunan Province, Nov. 3, 2013. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang) |
At 15, as an "educated youth," Xi left Beijing for a village called Liangjiahe in an arid part of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, carrying with him a small sewing bag embroidered with Chinese characters "mom's heart" by his mother Qi Xin.
Xi would later spend seven years in the countryside, working and living alongside farmers. He called himself a farmer when he recalled his Liangjiahe years. He was separated from his family, slept in cave dwellings, suffered from flea bites, and worked as hard as fellow villagers to tend crops, herd sheep, carry manure and haul coal.
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| Xi Jinping talks with a local family during a visit with his wife Peng Liyuan in Costa Rica, June 3, 2013. (Photo by Zhang Duo/Xinhua) |
He joined the CPC there and later became the village Party chief -- the beginning of his political career. Xi recalled his earnest wish then was "to make it possible for the villagers to have meat and have it often." He led them to dig wells, build dams, terrace hills and set up the province's first methane-generating pit.
This experience means a lot to Xi and he often talks about it, even after becoming the top leader. During a state visit to Costa Rica in 2013, he visited the home of a farming family and talked about his experience in the countryside.
"It is extremely rare for a president to speak so passionately and with such pride about being a farmer. Some people may downplay that aspect, but he does not; he emphasizes it," said Alberto Zamora, whose family owns the coffee plantation Xi visited.
Xi said he gained his understanding of the meaning of the word "people" through his experience in Liangjiahe, and it strengthened his determination to "serve the people" -- a principle he has adhered to over the decades.
In the late 1970s, after graduating from Tsinghua University, Xi served as a secretary to the minister of defense. In 1982, he volunteered to work at the grassroots level and moved to Zhengding, a poor county in north China's Hebei Province. Peng Liyuan, his wife, later said that many of Xi's classmates went abroad and he could have just done the same. But Xi stayed and chose a much harder path -- to be a servant to the people.
In his three years in Zhengding, where Xi served as deputy Party chief and then Party chief, Xi rode bicycles to all the communes and production teams of the county to inspect work. Sometimes, he arrived when villagers were tilling the fields. He would join them and do the farm work.
Then he spent over 17 years in Fujian Province and nearly five years in Zhejiang Province. He served multiple roles in the two coastal provinces including vice mayor, prefecture Party chief, municipal Party chief, provincial governor, and provincial Party chief. In 2007, he worked in Shanghai as its Party chief before ascending to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
Xi kept a close bond with the people wherever he worked, even after he was promoted to work at the apex of the Party. Xi has made it a tradition to visit the homes of the people ahead of every Spring Festival. Xi's early-year experience of hunger and toiling on the farms may help explain why he would check the kitchen, bathroom and cellar in ordinary people's homes. He also kept the habit of exchanging correspondence with the people. Those who received Xi's letters include farmers, entrepreneurs, pupils, grassland art troupe members, and soldiers guarding the borders.
In 2013, Xi initiated a "targeted poverty alleviation" drive and made plans for its implementation. Altogether, over 255,000 work teams and more than 3 million cadres were sent to the countryside to help villagers shake off poverty household by household. About 100 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty in the past decade.
Being with the people through thick and thin has strengthened his conviction: to strive for happiness for the people and rejuvenation for the nation. In the past decade, Xi initiated five Party-wide education campaigns to remind CPC members of their original aspiration and the Party's founding mission.
Xi is very familiar with the plight of the nation after the Opium Wars brought by Western colonialists in the 19th century. In 2018, he visited the ruins of a cannon fort on Liugong Island in east China's Shandong Province. More than a century ago, the island bore witness to the crushing defeat of China's first modern navy in the First Sino-Japanese War. Xi paused for thought at the ruins, and inside the museum for the war he read out a patriotic poem deploring the foreign invasion at the time.
As the first CPC chief born after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Xi shared pride in a string of achievements that manifested "the Chinese people have stood up": the victory in the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, the establishment of a relatively complete industrial system, and the manufacture of nuclear bombs and satellites. He commended the achievements. "Only socialism could save China; only socialism could develop China," he said.
After the reform and opening up was launched, Xi had great passion and devoted himself to the cause. From relatively poor inland regions to the country's affluent eastern coast, Xi took the lead in boosting foreign trade and investment, as well as the common development of both public and private businesses. As the Party's top leader, Xi convened a high-profile meeting of private businesses. He said private businesses and entrepreneurs are "our own people." He also said China's private sector can only be strengthened, not weakened.
Xi is regarded by his comrades, both at local and central levels, as being good at long-term planning.
In 2020, his strategic planning was manifested in mapping out the country's 14th Five-Year Plan and long-term objectives through 2035. To make a good plan, Xi chaired meetings to listen to the views and opinions of experts, business people, scientists and grassroots cadres. He instructed carrying out online suggestion collection. Chinese internet users gave over 1 million comments.
In the past decade, Chinese people's wealth grew steadily. In 2021, the per capita disposable income of the Chinese reached 35,128 yuan, growing nearly 80 percent from 2012. The urban-rural income ratio was narrowed to 2.5:1.
In Xi's words, all he did is essentially for the betterment of the people. He once penned a memoir in which he wrote, "We must love the people like we love our parents, work for their well-being and enable them to lead a better life." After becoming the general secretary, he said, "the people's aspiration for a better life is what we are striving for."
Meeting the press on Sunday after the first plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, Xi said the people will "always have our back and give us confidence," and the Party will always ride out the storm with the people and stay heart-to-heart with them.
The Party and the government enjoy good ratings. A Harvard University survey found that Chinese citizens' satisfaction with the government has increased across the board, with the central authorities receiving the highest level of approval at 93 percent. An Edelman poll also found that trust among Chinese citizens in their government reached 91 percent in 2021, the highest around the globe. (Xinhua, Mindanao Examiner)
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