Whether Xi Jinping resembles his father seems to be an ongoing topic of debate among Chinese folk. Sunday is Father’s Day, and the topic is again being picked up first by the official media.
When Xi Jinping first came to power, his father Xi Zhongxun had a reputation as an enlightened man in the Communist Party who was not afraid of strongmen, and even some Chinese pro-democracy activists in exile overseas had secret hopes that his son would be at least as tolerant as his father, or even that he would be able to vindicate the June Fourth Incident and initiate political reforms. But as time went on, people’s hopes were dashed, and a new narrative emerged that Xi Jinping is less like Xi Zhongxun and more like Mao Zedong.
On June 20, Western Father’s Day, a holiday that China, which has increasingly boycotted Western holidays in recent years, does not seem to have boycotted, the official media CCTV.com published ‘Xi Jinping and his father: the ‘relay’ of two generations of Communists’ on this holiday, which led to some more debates on whether Xi Jinping looks like his father or not. A netizen tweeted, “Xi Jinping honors his father on Father’s Day and remembers Mao Zedong on Mao’s birthday, that’s too split personality.
To see what CCTV said, CCTV reported that “Xi Jinping is proud of his father and has inherited and learned many valuable and noble qualities from him”, citing the example that “Xi Jinping, like his father Xi Zhongxun, always insisted on doing everything for the masses, relying on them, and coming from the masses to the masses. The report says, for example, “Xi Jinping, like his father Xi Zhongxun, always adhered to the mass line of coming from the masses and going to the masses,” and: “The power of example is infinite. His father’s words and deeds taught Xi Jinping how to be a purely beneficial person to the people.
Xi Jinping is proud of his father, not to mention that if he did not have a second-generation origin, especially if not shrouded by the reputation of Xi Zhongxun, he would not have gone early to a county in Hebei as a secretary, and then to Fujian to serve as secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, as a local official, Xi Jinping performance caution, so that the outside world thought “honest and reliable “The late Mao Zedong’s former secretary. Li Rui, a former secretary to the late Mao Zedong, wrote that he went to Zhejiang in 2006 and urged him to speak out against abuses in the system, which Li did as a bit of an incentive for Xi to learn from his father. Instead, Xi replied, “How can I compare with you? You can play rubbish, I dare not”. The “honest man strategy” worked, which led to Jiang Zemin Zeng Qinghong’s decision to let Xi Jinping take over as general secretary in alternate generations, so that they could continue to be the emperor in the future. It is said that Jiang and Zeng later “regretted it”.
In an interview with this station at the end of the 18th Communist Party Congress, pro-democracy leader Yan Jiaqi said, “I hope Xi Jinping, Xi Zhongxun’s son, can inherit his father’s good qualities. It can bring a hope to the Chinese people.” Three years later, a reporter asked him in a Voice of America interview: When Xi Jinping came to power, public opinion at home and abroad was hopeful. His father, Xi Zhongxun, also had a good reputation. Why do many people now think Xi Jinping is not like his father Xi Zhongxun, but rather like a little Mao Zedong? Yan Jiaqi admits, “It now seems that Xi Jinping has not inherited his father’s practices in many of his words and actions.”
Hu Ping, the editor-in-chief emeritus of Beijing Spring, wrote when the publication of ‘Yan Huang Chun Qiu’ was suspended: “When Xi Jinping first took office, many people had high hopes for him. The main reason was that Xi Jinping was the son of Xi Zhongxun. The father must have his son. But the encounter of “Yan Huang Chun Qiu” tells us that it is Xi Jinping, the son, who is the least likely to buy Xi Zhongxun’s account. Since taking office, Xi has not only failed to correct the mistakes of his predecessors in suppressing speech, but also further intensified the suppression of speech. It is on this key issue that Xi Jinping is unlike Xi Zhongxun.”
In his later years, Xi suggested the enactment of a “law on the protection of dissent,” which, according to Hu, “protects dissent and establishes freedom of speech, the essence of liberalism.” “It is in this sense that we say Xi Zhongxun is liberal; it is also in this sense that we say Xi Jinping is the unworthy son of Xi Zhongxun.”
Many people miss Xi because of his political enlightenment, as he allegedly opposed Hu Yaobang’s ouster by the older generation of leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, by means of life meetings, and the repression of the June Fourth Incident by high-handedness, and his belief that the flight of many mainlanders from Hong Kong should be handled by “internal conflicts within the people” and the use of the military. Xi Zhongxun also believed that the flight of many mainlanders from Hong Kong should be handled by “internal conflicts among the people” and opposed the use of the military.
Xi Zhongxun was always suppressed within the Party, and Xi Jinping went to Yan’an to join the army during the Cultural Revolution because his father was suppressed. Not only do they identify with it in spirit, but they also see it as a holy place where the leader made his fortune.
Xi Jinping proposes that the two decades before and after cannot be divided, downplaying the series of major political movements in the first three decades, including the great disasters caused to China by such tragic political movements as the Agrarian Reform, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and leaning fully in spirit to his father’s persecutor, Mao Zedong.
In his later years, Xi Zhongxun suggested the enactment of a “law for the protection of dissenting opinions,” and since Xi Jinping took power, he has taken aim at freedom of speech and at any remaining freedom in places like Hong Kong, from the kidnapping of five employees of the Causeway Bay bookstore to what happened to the founder of Apple Daily, Lai Chi-ying, today. His regime is determined to turn a place with a high degree of autonomy and freedom that mainlanders do not enjoy into a haunted place.
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