Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed below represent the opinions of the article’s author. The following work does not necessarily represent the views of the Synergy: Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies.
Abstract
Following the death of Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) outlawed cults of personality. Today, is China seeing a return to a Maoist cult under Xi Jinping? This paper assesses the presence of a personality cult in China today, specifically by using a widely-cited definitional framework created by Jan Plamper to examine Joseph Stalin’s personality cult. This paper finds that Xi is indeed creating a cult of personality around himself. Leveraging state media, President Xi has been actively burnishing his public image and creating mass appeal for himself among the “people,” or laobaixing. Personality cults are hallmarks of autocracy, and the presence of a new “cult of Xi” in China could signal a return to personalistic rule. Personalistic dictatorships tend to be more unstable than other regime types. They are more likely to pursue aggressive foreign policies and initiate interstate conflict, thus making the implications of this paper’s findings significant to regional stability in East Asia.
Keywords: cult of personality, Xi Jinping, China, propaganda, mass media
Introduction
During the Cultural Revolution, China was swept up in the “cult of Mao.”[1] At the height of Mao Zedong’s personality cult, everyday Chinese people read the Little Red Book daily (tiantian du), admitted to “thought crimes” in front of Mao’s portrait, and took part in “loyalty dances” (zhongzi wu) to assert allegiance to the supreme leader.[2] After Mao’s death, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) outlawed personality cults in its constitution, in an effort to prevent personalized power from taking hold of the country again.[3] However, with the rise of President Xi Jinping, observers have speculated that the current leader is fostering a new “cult of Xi” around himself.[4] After establishing a definitional framework, this paper will compare relevant changes made under Xi’s leadership and past generations of Chinese leadership dating back to Mao. Ultimately, this paper finds that Xi is indeed cultivating a personality cult that hearkens back to Mao’s, but one that is nowhere close to the scale of the Mao era.
What is a Cult of Personality?
Cults of personality (geren chongbai) are usually characterized by the glorification of a single political leader. However, it is important to note that the adulation of political leaders is not uncommon, even in modern democracies. Today, Western politicians are often hailed as celebrities and visionaries.[5] What separates mere adulation from a cult of personality? Jan Plamper, in his widely-cited analysis of Stalin’s cult of personality, provides five criteria for modern personality cults.
First, a cult of personality must be directed towards and derive its legitimacy from the masses, rather than a narrow strand of elites.[6] Second, the cult of personality must leverage mass media and extol the leader’s virtues to the general public.[7] Third, modern personality cults must necessarily emerge in “closed societies.”[8] In highly-controlled spaces, alternative or dissenting narratives is much less likely to develop.[9] Fourth, a modern personality cult are secular.[10] It is not rooted in spiritual claims to legitimacy, such as the Mandate of Heaven, rather based on a claim to popular sovereignty.[11] Finally, a cult of personality must be “patricentric,” reflecting the dominance of men in society.[12]
This paper will only engage with Plamper’s first two criteria. For the purposes of comparison between generations of Chinese leadership, the last three criteria are irrelevant because they hold true for all post-1949 Chinese leaders. The “closed society” criterion is not relevant to this comparison either, because Communist China has always been a space where dissenting narratives are not tolerated. The secularist criterion is not discussed in this paper, because the CCP is officially atheist, China has no state religion, and no modern Chinese leaders have appealed to religion as a claim to legitimacy.[13] The gender criterion is also not particularly contentious in this comparison of Xi with past generations of Chinese leadership, because post-1949 Chinese leadership has been almost exclusively comprised of males.[14] Discussing only the first two criteria, this paper will evaluate whether Xi Jinping’s rise to power has brought with it a new cult of personality unseen since the Mao years.
The Cult of Xi
Mass appeal
In contrast to recent generations of Chinese leadership, President Xi has made an effort to cultivate a relatable image of himself as a man of the people.[15] Xi’s endeavors to create mass appeal for himself are highly relevant to this discussion, as mass appeal is Plamper’s first criterion of personality cults.[16] To create mass appeal, Xi has deliberately used accessible language that is legible for regular citizens, aimed at creating a folksy image of himself as a leader.[17] Chinese state media often features Xi mingling with the people (laobaixing) and speaking to them in colloquial language. During a press conference after the 19th CCP National Congress, Xi’s first words to the press were “I have kept you waiting,” a show of plainspoken humility that earned him praise from Chinese netizens.[18] On another occasion, Xi appeared in a Beijing residential area on a smoggy day without a face mask.[19] Through this act, Xi embodied the party slogan of “breathing the same air, and bearing the same fate,” which further contributed to his “man of the people” image on the internet.[20] Perhaps most famously, President Xi once paid for his own platter of Chinese buns (baozi) at a restaurant in Beijing, eating his meal at a table with other patrons before bussing his own tray.[21] This incident went viral on Chinese social media and the restaurant was overrun with customers the next day.[22]
The nickname “Xi Dada” is another example of Xi’s mass appeal, likely instigated by state media as another attempt by the government to cultivate an accessible and fatherly image of Xi.[23] In Shaanxi province, where Xi and his father have deep roots, the honorific “dada” literally means “father” or “uncle.”[24] This nickname has been well-received across China, spawning multiple songs to praise President Xi, some with dance moves that hearken back to the loyalty dances of the Mao era (zhongzi wu).[25] The resulting public perception of Xi depicts him as a man of the people, a paternalistic, warm, and relatable fellow countryman.[26]
Xi’s approach has clearly been effective. China experts have noted that his “popularity is solid among the laobaixing.”[27] While there are no open opinion polls in China to measure Xi’s popularity, journalists have often reported encountering enthusiastic locals who are loyal fans of the President. During a state visit by Xi to Hainan, one local fisherman told The Observer that Xi “treats people well” and “seems like a good guy.”[28] Another shop-owner told reporters that Xi “seems like a very easy-going and warm person,” adding that “in our hearts and in our minds, he is better than previous leaders.”[29] These testimonies further point to Xi’s mass appeal among the people (laobaixing).
The mass appeal that Xi currently enjoys is a major departure from Xi’s immediate predecessors. After personality cults were outlawed by the CCP, Chinese bureaucracy gradually became “impersonal, often faceless.” The government ceased to make a concerted effort to make the paramount leader relatable to the masses.[30] In fact, Xi’s post-Mao predecessors tended to lack mass appeal, holding public images that were anything but folksy. Hu Jintao was often described in the press as “wooden” and “rigid.”[31] While Jiang Zemin was known for singing karaoke with foreign dignitaries, he lacked popular appeal in the eyes of his people.[32] One journalist living in Beijing in the 1990s recalled that few ordinary citizens had any strong feelings about the unremarkable Jiang.[33] Deng Xiaoping called the “glorification of the individual” an abnormality and tried to move past the Maoist personality cult.[34] Even one of Deng’s most charming political offensives during the end of his time as the paramount leader, the 1992 southern tour, was not intended to create mass appeal. Rather, the purpose of the southern tour was to win a policy battle among Beijing elites.[35]
Mao, on the other hand, was famous for his ability to appeal to the masses. During his tenure, Mao “commanded enormous popularity, especially among the peasants.”[36] Mao held intense mass appeal because he was an outspoken advocate for the peasant class, who were the majority of China’s population at the time.[37] This was no accident: Mao deliberately used songs and images to show his “concern for the common worker” and reinforce a “paternalistic, caring image.”[38] Many Chinese people will remember singing songs praising Mao, with lyrics such as “Dear Chairman Mao / great Chairman Mao / everyone under the sky loves you.”[39] In comparison, Xi’s return to a popular “man of the people” image can be understood as a form of Maoist revival. While public devotion to Xi is nowhere near that of Mao at the peak of the Cultural Revolution, Xi’s efforts to cultivate his image is an embrace of the strategies employed under Mao’s personality cult.
The use of mass media
Xi has leveraged mass media to promote his personal image more than any of his predecessors, perhaps except for Mao. The use of mass media to cultivate a leader’s image is relevant to our discussion of personality cults, as Plamper’s second criterion in his definitional framework.[40] One of the main types of Chinese media that observers have tracked are state-sanctioned outlets such as the People’s Daily. As the CCP’s mouthpiece, state-sanctioned publications reflect not only party policies, but also power dynamics within the party leadership.[41] Since Xi’s rise to power, these outlets have signalled the shift of executive power into an increasingly personalized and concentrated model, invested in one individual: Xi.
A recent study by Kyle Jaros and Jennifer Pan of nearly two million Chinese newspaper articles found that provincial media reflected “increases in the personalization and centralization of political authority” compared to coverage under past generations of leadership, while party institutions received lower-profile treatment.[42] Researchers at the University of Hong Kong also found that Xi’s name has been mentioned in the People’s Daily more than any leader since Mao.[43] These statistics point to the employment of mass media to cast Xi as the face of the Chinese nation, emphasizing the centrality of one individual leader rather than collective party leadership.
A 2017 People’s Daily cover offers a particularly striking example of this argument. In the post-Mao era, portraits of Politburo members usually share the cover of the People’s Daily after leadership reshuffles, symbolizing the collective leadership structure.[44] However, following a Politburo reshuffle in 2017, Xi’s airbrushed portrait – noted by some as resembling Mao’s portraits – dominated the front page, leaving the other leaders’ faces barely visible.[45] While Deng, Jiang, and Hu’s portraits were all equal in size to other Politburo members during their tenures, Xi’s fellow Politburo members did not receive individual portraits on the 2017 cover.[46] A leader occupying such a prominent position on the front page of the party-endorsed newspaper has not been seen since Mao.[47]
The Daily has used more than mere symbolism to reinforce Xi’s central position on the national stage. The paper has referred to Xi as the “the helmsman of the nation,” the “guide of the people,” and most notably, the “core” (hexin) of party leadership.[48] This is another example of departure from Xi’s predecessor Hu. The concept of the “core” was introduced by Deng Xiaoping to establish Jiang Zemin as the leader of the third-generation of Chinese leadership, but it was discarded after Hu rose to power.[49] While state media referred to Jiang as the hexin, Hu was always simply referred to as the General Secretary of the CCP.[50] This change in title signalled a shift towards collective leadership, moving away from the model of a single glorified leader. However, since Xi’s rise to power, state publications such as Qiushi, the Tianjin Daily, the Sichuan Daily, and the People’s Tribune have all referred to Xi as the hexin, once again focusing on his personal leadership as the pinnacle of CCP rule.[51]
Beyond newspaper publications, other forms of mass media also include posters, photos, and videos. Today, Xi occupies hours of airtime on state television, often shown visiting factories, labs, and farms where he is surrounded by workers who “typically applaud [him] for several minutes.”[52] Much like Mao’s portrait, Xi’s likeable image has become ubiquitous around China, dominating the “front pages of state newspapers, … magazine covers, posters sold at markets, billboards around parks and signs posted along sidewalks.”[53] Most banners bearing Xi’s image called upon the country to protect Xi as the “core” of the party. According to Daniel Leese, a scholar studying the Mao personality cult, intertwining “the fate of the nation with the fate of … its current leader” in this manner is a textbook feature of personality cults.[54]
The tremendous leveraging of mass media to extol the virtues of a single leader has not been seen since the Mao era. Mao frequently employed “radio, newspapers and magazines” to build his paternal image, “raising public support … and sending a clear message to his adversaries … that he was firmly in power.”[55] Mao also made great use of video to spread his cult. He would call upon “special film teams” to cover his speeches to masses of Red Guards, and distribute these images nationally to spread fervour for the Cultural Revolution.[56] Many of the video clips released to the public had a clear political purpose. For example, Mao’s famous swim in the Yangtze River was meant to demonstrate to the nation and Mao’s rivals that he was in good health and still strong enough to lead the country.[57]
Post-Mao leaders in China have been more reserved in their use of mass media. While all Chinese leaders have published books, they have usually been unremarkable “tired volumes of speeches.”[58] With the exception of the Little Red Book, publications by Chinese leaders have generally had little political impact. Xi has taken a different approach, releasing a book about his experience as a young adult in the countryside doing hard labour.[59] The cover features a smiling young Xi in the countryside, which stands in stark contrast to the uninspiring clothbound cover of the book Selected Works of Hu Jintao.[60] Xi’s books are also breaking another trend. Starting with Jiang, Chinese leaders have only released books after their retirement as a coda to their time in office.[61] Hu continued this trend, publishing two books after his retirement.[62] Flouting this normative practice, Xi has already published two books during his time in office. In academic circles, Hu did not have his theories implemented into university curriculums, unlike his predecessors.[63] Since 2014, however, the CCP has required Chinese universities to implement the Important Speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping into their curriculum, representing another repudiation of Hu’s public legacy.[64]
Evidently, Xi’s use of mass media in all its forms represents a reactionary shift that resembles Mao more closely than Xi’s recent predecessors. Combined with his cultivation of a public image with mass appeal, President Xi is evidently fostering a cult of personality around himself, albeit nowhere close to the scale of the Mao cult at the height of the Cultural Revolution.
Counterarguments
Some scholars have rejected the claim that Xi is pursuing a cult of personality. Xin Lu and Elena Soboleva argue that such allegations are “baseless” by contending that unlike the North Korean regime, Xi is not crafting the public perception of himself as superhuman.[65] Rather, Xi’s strategy is to portray himself as a regular person.[66] However, this effort to appear relatable to regular citizens still constitutes an attempt to create mass appeal, and Lu and Soboleva concedes to this argument. Therefore, Xi’s endeavors to cultivate relatability nonetheless still satisfies Plamper’s definition.[67]
Lu and Soboleva also argue that a personality cult cannot take hold in China because “the regime is no longer in total control of education and social media, or flows of people and ideas.”[68] As noted in the previous section, the state’s grip on the education system remains so tight that it can insert party dogma into the curriculum at will.[69] State censorship remains highly effective at controlling public discourse, and both mass surveillance and the household registration (hukou) system are among many powerful tools deployed to control and monitor population flows within China.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Xi’s recent attempts to burnish his public image more closely resemble the strategies of the Mao cult than any of his other predecessors. Determining whether a cult of Xi exists is an important exercise because “personality cults are the hallmark … of established autocracy.”[70] With fears that China is falling deeper into autocracy under Xi, the existence of a cult of personality can act as a canary in the coal mine for China-watchers. Data shows that personalist dictatorships, as opposed to technocratic dictatorships, “tend to produce the worst outcomes of any type of political regime: they tend to produce the most risky and aggressive foreign policies; they are the most likely to invest in nuclear weapons; the most likely to fight wars against democracies; and the most likely to initiate interstate conflicts.”[71] China’s potential to become a destabilizing force thus has major consequences for the international system. To understand China’s domestic landscape and the significance of China’s global rise, it is important that scholars continue to monitor and study the presence of a cult of Xi in China.
Andrew Zhao is a third-year student at the University of Toronto, specializing in Political Science and minoring in Philosophy. His research interests include electoral politics, voting behaviour, global governance, and the domestic politics of China and the US.
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[1] Tony C. Lee, “Can Xi Jinping Be the next Mao Zedong? Using the Big Five Model to Study Political Leadership,” Journal of Chinese Political Science, 20 February 2018, 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-018-9540-0.
[2] Daniel Leese, Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 2.
[3] Luwei Rose Luqiu, “The Reappearance of the Cult of Personality in China,” East Asia 33, no. 4 (2016): 292, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-016-9262-x.
[4] “Beware the Cult of Xi,” The Economist, 2 April 2016, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2016/04/02/beware-the-cult-of-xi.
[5] Megan McArdle, “Can Out-of-State Money Swing Elections? Don’t Beto on It.,” Washington Post, 5 November 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-have-a-blue-wave-of-cash-in-some-races-will-it-pay-off/2018/11/05/fcf08596-e148-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html; “Obama’s Ideology: Can He Be Both Pragmatic and Visionary?,” The Economist, 11 April 2011, https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2011/04/11/can-he-be-both-pragmatic-and-visionary.
[6] Jan Plamper, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), xvii.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Daniel Leese, “The Cult of Personality and Symbolic Politics,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, ed. Stephen A. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 341, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199602056.013.019.
[12] Plamper, The Stalin Cult, xviii.
[13] Eleanor Albert, “The State of Religion in China,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 11, 2018, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/religion-china.
[14] Yazhou Sun, “Why China Has so Few Female Leaders,” CNN, 25 October 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/22/asia/china-female-leaders/index.html.
[15] Javier C. Hernández, “For Xi Jinping, Being a Man of the People Means Looking the Part,” The New York Times, September 28, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/xi-jinping-china-propaganda.html.
[16] Plamper, The Stalin Cult, xvii.
[17] Leese, “The Cult of Personality and Symbolic Politics,” 341–42.
[18] Xin Lu and Elena Soboleva, “Personality Cults in Modern Politics: Cases from Russia and China,” CGP Working Paper Series, January 2014, 21.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Matt Schiavenza, “Xi Jinping Eats Some Dumplings at a Restaurant,” The Atlantic, 30 December 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/xi-jinping-eats-some-dumplings-at-a-restaurant/282719/; Javier C. Hernández and Audrey Carlsen, “Why Xi Jinping’s (Airbrushed) Face Is Plastered All Over China,” The New York Times, 9 November 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/09/world/asia/xi-propaganda.html, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/09/world/asia/xi-propaganda.html.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Luqiu, “The Reappearance of the Cult of Personality in China,” 298–99.
[24] Ibid., 299.
[25] “The Ideal Chinese Husband: Xi Dada and the Cult of Personality Growing around China’s President,” South China Morning Post, February 29, 2016, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/1918443/ideal-chinese-husband-xi-dada-and-cult-personality.
[26] Hernández and Carlsen, “Why Xi Jinping’s (Airbrushed) Face Is Plastered All Over China.”
[27] Tom Phillips, “Chairman Xi Crushes Dissent but Poor Believe He’s Making China Great,” The Observer, 14 October 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/14/xi-jinping-crushes-dissent-but-making-china-great-again.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Doug Sanders, “Why Xi Jinping’s Cult of Personality Is More Dangerous than It Looks,” The Globe and Mail, 2 March 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-xi-jinpings-cult-of-personality-is-more-dangerous-than-it-looks/article38168122/.
[31] Schiavenza, “Xi Jinping Eats Some Dumplings at a Restaurant”; Hernández and Carlsen, “Why Xi Jinping’s (Airbrushed) Face Is Plastered All Over China.”
[32] Jennifer Clibbon, “A Look Back: Jiang Zemin and a More Accountable China,” CBC, July 17, 2011, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/a-look-back-jiang-zemin-and-a-more-accountable-china-1.1028404.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Aris Teon, “Deng Xiaoping On Personality Cult And One-Man Rule – 1980 Interview,” The Greater China Journal (blog), March 1, 2018, https://china-journal.org/2018/03/01/deng-xiaoping-on-personality-cult-and-one-man-rule-1980-interview/.
[35] Suisheng Zhao, “Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour: Elite Politics in Post-Tiananmen China,” Asian Survey 33, no. 8 (August 1993): 747, https://doi.org/10.2307/2645086.
[36] Leese, Mao Cult, 14.
[37] Maurice J. Meisner, Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 165.
[38] Hernández, “For Xi Jinping, Being a Man of the People Means Looking the Part.”
[39] “日夜想念毛主席,” 中国共产党新闻网, accessed November 2, 2018, http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64150/64154/4509572.html.
[40] Plamper, The Stalin Cult, xvii.
[41] Hernández and Carlsen, “Why Xi Jinping’s (Airbrushed) Face Is Plastered All Over China.”
[42] Kyle Jaros and Jennifer Pan, “China’s Newsmakers: Official Media Coverage and Political Shifts in the Xi Jinping Era,” The China Quarterly 233 (March 2018): 111, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741017001679.
[43] Casey Hall, “Is Xi Jinping Cultivating a Personality Cult? Or Just a Personality?,” Forbes, accessed November 9, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/caseyhall/2016/04/26/is-xi-jinping-cultivating-a-personality-cult-or-just-a-personality/.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Ibid.
[47] “On Front Page of China’s Flagship Paper, Xi Gets Mao-like Prominence,” Reuters, 26 October 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-media-idUSKBN1CV11X.
[48] Xiangwei Wang, “As Fears of Xi’s Personality Cult Deepen, China Must Dial down the Propaganda,” South China Morning Post, March 24, 2018, http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2138481/fears-xis-personality-cult-deepen-china-must-dial-down-propaganda.
[49] Luqiu, “The Reappearance of the Cult of Personality in China,” 293–94.
[50] Ibid., 294.
[51] Ibid., 294–95.
[52] “AP Photos: Xi Cult of Personality Unseen in China since Mao,” The Associated Press, March 12, 2018, https://apnews.com/d36465492d6b48e3bbf1ddc01cc56869.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Leese, “The Cult of Personality and Symbolic Politics,” 342.
[55] Lu and Soboleva, “Personality Cults in Modern Politics,” 19.
[56] Leese, Mao Cult, 256.
[57] Lu and Soboleva, “Personality Cults in Modern Politics,” 20.
[58] Hernández and Carlsen, “Why Xi Jinping’s (Airbrushed) Face Is Plastered All Over China.”
[59] Ibid.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Luqiu, “The Reappearance of the Cult of Personality in China,” 292.
[62] Ibid.
[63] Ibid., 293.
[64] Ibid., 292.
[65] Lu and Soboleva, “Personality Cults in Modern Politics,” 21.
[66] Ibid., 22.
[67] Ibid., 21–22; Plamper, The Stalin Cult, xviii.
[68] Lu and Soboleva, “Personality Cults in Modern Politics,” 22.
[69] Luqiu, “The Reappearance of the Cult of Personality in China,” 292.
[70] Ibid., 290.
[71] Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Erica Frantz, and Joseph Wright, “The New Dictators,” Foreign Affairs, 26 September 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-09-26/new-dictators.
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