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Xi Jinping (1953–)

The CCP's supreme leader since 2012. Under him: the Xinjiang "re-education" camps (2017–, over a million Uyghurs detained), the Hong Kong National Security Law (2020), extreme COVID lockdowns (2020–2022), and the "709" lawyer crackdown (2015). In 2018 he removed presidential term limits. The Xi era is defined by a revived personality cult, rule for life, and high-tech totalitarianism. This page documents his major decisions of repression.

Lifespan

June 15, 1953 (Beijing) – living

In power

November 2012 – present (over 12 years; can serve for life after the 2018 constitutional amendment)

Positions

General Secretary of the CCP, President of China, Chairman of the Central Military Commission (the "trinity")

Key crimes

Xinjiang re-education camps (2017–), Hong Kong National Security Law (2020), extreme COVID lockdowns (2020–2022), 709 lawyer crackdown (2015), term-limit removal (2018)

1. Princeling's rise: from Liangjiahe to Zhongnanhai

Xi Jinping was born in Beijing in 1953; his father Xi Zhongxun was a CCP elder (former Vice Premier). During the Cultural Revolution, the elder Xi was purged, and the younger Xi was sent as a "sent-down youth" to Liangjiahe village in Yanchuan County, Shaanxi in 1969, where he stayed seven years. Official media endlessly replays this episode as proof of his toughness — but critics note those seven years taught him above all how to survive inside the system: obey, endure, wait.

In 2007 Xi entered the Politburo Standing Committee; at the 18th Party Congress in 2012 he succeeded Hu Jintao as General Secretary. Unlike Hu, Xi is a "princeling" with built-in power legitimacy (in CCP logic). His first card after taking office was "anti-corruption" — from 2013, with Wang Qishan as enforcer, he took down Zhou Yongkang, Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong, Sun Zhengcai, and a host of other senior officials.

But "anti-corruption" was power struggle by another name. Those investigated were almost all political rivals or holdovers from previous eras, while Xi's own loyalists (Cai Qi, Li Qiang) rose fast. This selective anti-corruption terrified the bureaucracy and established Xi's unchallengeable authority.

Sources: Cai Xia on Xi's path to power; Xi Jinping: The Governance of China; New York Times investigations into the "anti-corruption" campaign.

2. The 709 lawyer crackdown (2015): strangling the rule of law

Causes: In the 2000s, China developed a cohort of "rights lawyers" who took land-seizure, labor-rights, and religious-freedom cases — the last hope for ordinary people at the bottom. Wang Quanzhang, Li Heping, Xie Yanyi, Wang Yu and others handled sensitive cases for years and were seen by the authorities as troublemakers.

Course: In the early hours of July 9, 2015, Wang Yu, director of the Beijing Fengrui law firm, was seized. Over the following days, more than 200 lawyers and firm staff nationwide were taken away, summoned, or put under residential surveillance — the "709 crackdown." Most detained lawyers were charged with "inciting subversion of state power" or "picking quarrels" and routinely tortured in custody (electric shocks, sleep deprivation, marathon interrogations).

Wang Quanzhang was held incommunicado for over 1,000 days and sentenced in January 2019 to four years and six months — the last of the 709 lawyers to be sentenced. Li Heping got three years with a four-year reprieve. Xie Yanyi was released on bail but remains under tight surveillance. After release, virtually all were disbarred and can no longer practice.

The lasting damage: the "rights lawyer" community in China ceased to exist. The authorities then rolled out the slogan "lawyers must have the Party as their surname," demanding political loyalty from the profession. Law became, completely, an instrument of power.

Sources: Human Rights Watch reporting on the 709 crackdown; open letters from 709 families; statements by Li Wenzu (Wang Quanzhang's wife); Amnesty International reports.

3. Xinjiang re-education camps (2017–): a million detained

Causes: In August 2016, Chen Quanguo was transferred to Xinjiang as Party secretary, fresh from a hardline reputation in Tibet. From 2017, Xinjiang began building "vocational skills education and training centers" on a massive scale — the official name for what were in fact internment camps. Triggers included the 2014 Kunming railway-station terrorist attack, overseas "East Turkestan" propaganda, and Xi's demand, in speeches on Xinjiang work, to show "absolutely no mercy."

Scale: According to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (2018), Human Rights Watch, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), and others, at the 2017–2019 peak more than one million Uyghur, Kazakh, and other Muslim minorities were held in the camps — roughly 10% of Xinjiang's adult Uyghur population. ASPI identified over 380 suspected detention facilities across Xinjiang via satellite imagery.

Inside the camps: Large numbers of escapees testified to militarized management: forced Mandarin study, singing red songs, memorizing "Xi Jinping Thought"; electric shocks and solitary confinement for the disobedient; forced sterilization of women (Associated Press investigation, 2019); children sent to "boarding schools" separated from parents. In May 2022, the "Xinjiang Police Files" leak — thousands of detainee photographs and rosters — confirmed the scale of internment.

Competing claims:

Sources: UN Human Rights Office, Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in Xinjiang (August 2022); ASPI reports on Xinjiang detention facilities; Xinjiang Police Files (May 2022); AP investigative reporting; Human Rights Watch and Amnesty reports.

4. Hong Kong National Security Law (2020): the end of "one country, two systems"

Causes: In 2019, Hong Kong erupted in the anti-extradition ("anti-ELAB") movement — millions marched against amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance. The movement lasted months and evolved into demands for "one country, two systems" and democratic universal suffrage. In early 2020, COVID paused street action, but Beijing decided to "solve" the problem once and for all.

The legislation: On May 28, 2020, the NPC passed the Decision on Establishing and Improving the Legal System and Enforcement Mechanisms for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong. On June 30, the NPC Standing Committee unanimously passed the Hong Kong National Security Law, effective that night. The entire drafting and deliberation bypassed Hong Kong's Legislative Council and any consultation with Hongkongers — "Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong," the promise of "one country, two systems," became a joke.

The aftermath: After the law took effect, the Hong Kong police's National Security Department arrested on a grand scale: Jimmy Lai (Apple Daily founder), Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Benny Tai and other democrats were jailed; Apple Daily was forced to close (June 2021); the 47-person primary case (2021) netted nearly the entire democratic political class; the Hong Kong Alliance (the June Fourth vigil organizer) was banned; RTHK, the Professional Teachers' Union, and others were purged in turn.

Before 2020, Hong Kong still had marches, still had Apple Daily, still had the June Fourth candlelight vigil. After the National Security Law, all of it vanished. International ratings agencies sharply downgraded Hong Kong's freedom scores; large numbers of Hongkongers emigrated to the UK, Canada, and Taiwan.

Sources: Full text of the Hong Kong National Security Law; Amnesty International, Hong Kong: Two Years Under the National Security Law; Hong Kong Journalists Association statements; U.K. Foreign Office Six-Monthly Reports on Hong Kong.

5. COVID lockdowns (2020–2022): the humanitarian cost of "dynamic zero"

The Wuhan cover-up: In December 2019, an unknown pneumonia emerged in Wuhan. Doctors including Li Wenliang warned colleagues in WeChat groups and were reprimanded by police for "rumor-mongering." On January 23, 2020, Wuhan was locked down — but five million people had already left the city (admitted by Mayor Zhou Xianwang himself). The initial cover-up and delay let the virus spread across China and the world.

Dynamic zero: From 2020 to 2022, China enforced the world's strictest lockdown regime: "dynamic zero-COVID." Measures included citywide PCR testing (round after round), health codes (a red code meant quarantine), fangcang shelter hospitals (mild cases forcibly isolated), sealed residential compounds, sealed cities. During the March–May 2022 Shanghai lockdown: food shortages, blocked medical care (an asthma patient died after being denied hospital access), suicides.

Humanitarian disasters: On September 18, 2022, a bus transporting people to quarantine overturned on a Guizhou highway, killing 27 — the midnight transfer itself was to meet "zero-COVID" quotas. On November 24, 2022, a residential building fire in Urumqi killed 10 (official figure; widely doubted) after COVID barriers blocked fire access. The fire directly triggered the nationwide "White Paper" protests (late November 2022), with demonstrators holding blank sheets demanding an end to lockdowns — some even chanting "Xi Jinping step down."

On December 7, 2022, Beijing abruptly announced the "New Ten Measures," abandoning zero-COVID and fully reopening — with zero preparation: hospitals overwhelmed, medicines gone, crematoriums queuing. Multiple estimates put COVID deaths in the two months after reopening at hundreds of thousands to over a million (the official count acknowledged only tens of thousands). From "excessive control" to "total surrender," a 180-degree turn — without a word of apology.

Sources: Caixin's investigative reporting on Wuhan's early days; Li Wenliang's police reprimand letter; Shanghai government lockdown notices; official Guizhou bus-crash bulletins; Urumqi fire reporting; White Paper movement firsthand accounts; excess-mortality estimates in The Lancet and other medical journals.

6. Constitutional amendment and personality cult: rule for life

On March 11, 2018, the NPC passed constitutional amendments 2,958 to 2 (with 3 abstentions), removing the "no more than two consecutive terms" limit on the presidency. Xi could now serve as president for life. Before the vote, state media campaigned for "keeping pace with the times" — but public outrage was palpable. It was the first time since the 1982 constitution that the charter had been amended for one man.

Meanwhile the personality cult fully revived: "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" entered the Party constitution (2017) and the state constitution (2018); the "Two Establishes" (establishing Xi's core status; establishing Xi Thought as guiding doctrine) became mandatory catechism; the "Study Xi" app forced daily study on Party members; school textbooks added Xi Thought content. The practices eerily echoed the Cultural Revolution's "morning instructions, evening reports."

At the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, Xi broke precedent to take a third term as General Secretary, packing the Standing Committee entirely with loyalists ("the Xi family army"). As the congress closed, footage of Hu Jintao being escorted from the hall went around the world — the new era needs no "elders," only the "core."

Sources: NPC constitutional amendments (2018); Xi Jinping: The Governance of China; 20th Party Congress communiqués; Reuters and AP reporting on the congress.

7. How it works: "one man rules"

Xi's decision-making can be summed up in four characters: 定于一尊 — "one man rules." From 2016, official propaganda called Xi the "core"; after the 19th Congress in 2017, "safeguarding the authority of the Party Central Committee and centralized, unified leadership" became the supreme political principle — in practice, safeguarding Xi's personal authority.

Unlike Hu's "nine dragons ruling the waters," Xi concentrated power through the anti-corruption drive, the 2015 military reforms (seven military regions reorganized into five theater commands), and a thicket of "leading groups" (all chaired by himself), shrinking the Standing Committee from nine to seven, all loyalists. This hyper-centralization means every major decision — Xinjiang policy, COVID lockdowns — was signed off by Xi alone.

The risk: no capacity for self-correction. When "dynamic zero" was visibly causing humanitarian disasters, no one dared object; when Xinjiang policy drew international condemnation, no one dared suggest adjustment. All information was filtered layer by layer; what reached Xi was "a land of song and dance." The parallel with Mao's late years is uncanny.

Sources: Cai Xia on Xi's path to power; CCP Constitution (2017 revision); reporting on the military reforms; Wu Guoguang's research on "one man rules."

8. Controversies

The official line ("guide of the new era"): Official propaganda credits Xi with "leading China into the new era" and "achieving the first centenary goal" (a moderately prosperous society). Criticism of Xinjiang, Hong Kong, or COVID policy is uniformly dismissed as "anti-China smears."

Liberal critics: They call Xi "Mao 2.0" — reversing history, burying Deng-era "reform and opening." The late Yu Ying-shih said: "Xi wants to be Mao, but he has Mao's cruelty without Mao's charisma."

Little-pink supporters: Among nationalistic youth, Xi enjoys considerable support. "Amazing, my country" — they see Xinjiang and Hong Kong policies as "safeguarding national unity." That support owes much to the information blockade and nationalist propaganda.

9. Historical impact

Xi remains in power; a final verdict is premature. But several trends are already clear:

First, the bankruptcy of the "China model." The failure of "dynamic zero" and the eruption of the White Paper movement proved that totalitarian systems cannot handle complex challenges. Internationally, "China threat" has replaced "China opportunity"; the West is accelerating "decoupling."

Second, the return of the personality cult. "Xi Jinping Thought," the "Two Establishes," "one man rules" — the revival of Cultural Revolution language sends chills down the spines of those who lived through it.

Third, the victims' suffering continues. The Xinjiang camps, Hong Kong's political prisoners, the young people arrested in the White Paper movement, those who lost loved ones to COVID — their pain will not vanish under "new era" propaganda.

How will history judge Xi Jinping? Too early to say. But one thing is certain: when the archives open and the truth comes out, everything being covered up today will be re-examined.

10. The paper trail: speeches and decisions, 2014–2020

The Second Central Xinjiang Work Forum (Beijing, May 28–29, 2014) set social stability and lasting order as the overarching goal for Xinjiang. The official readout of Xi’s speech stressed making the severe crackdown on violent terrorism the immediate focus, building mass prevention networks, instilling what it called correct views of the nation among all ethnic groups, and handling religion under five principles: protect the lawful, ban the unlawful, curb extremism, resist infiltration, and punish crime. Later official summaries condensed the approach into governing Xinjiang by law, through unity, and for the long term.

The internal speeches and the Xinjiang Papers. In November 2019 the New York Times published 403 pages of leaked internal documents, including speeches Xi gave during and after an April 2014 visit to Xinjiang that followed the Kunming railway station attack, in which 31 people were killed. As reported by the newspaper, the speeches called for an all-out struggle using the organs of dictatorship and showing absolutely no mercy. The documents were provided by an unnamed member of the political establishment, and their full authenticity cannot be independently verified (not independently verified). Beijing’s responses ran on two tracks: the Foreign Ministry dismissed the reporting as a clumsy patchwork that took meaning out of context, while China’s ambassador in London called the documents pure fabrication. China denies mistreating Uyghurs and describes the facilities as vocational training schools.

Sinicization of religion (April 22–23, 2016). At the first National Religious Work Conference since 2001, Xi said that an important task in guiding religions to adapt to socialist society was supporting China’s religions in persisting in the direction of sinicization, including reinterpreting doctrine in line with contemporary development. The formula was written into his report to the 19th Party Congress in 2017, and in 2018 the State Administration for Religious Affairs was absorbed into the United Front Work Department, putting religious affairs under direct Party management. The religious rectification campaigns later carried out in Xinjiang and Tibet in the name of sinicization trace back to this decision.

The Hong Kong decision chain. The Fourth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee (October 28–31, 2019) resolved to establish and improve Hong Kong’s national-security legal system. On May 28, 2020, the National People’s Congress voted 2,878 to 1, with 6 abstentions, to authorize its Standing Committee to legislate. The committee reviewed the draft on June 18–20 and June 28–30, passed the National Security Law unanimously on June 30, added it to Annex III of the Basic Law, and brought it into force in Hong Kong at 11 p.m. the same day, bypassing the Hong Kong legislature; the full text was published only on the night it took effect.

The Seventh Tibet Work Forum (Beijing, August 28–29, 2020) produced the strategy known as the “ten musts”: uphold Party leadership, Chinese socialism, and regional ethnic autonomy; uphold the principle that governing the country requires governing the borders and governing the borders requires first stabilizing Tibet; focus on safeguarding national unity and strengthening ethnic unity; govern Tibet by law, enrich the people, and build for the long term while winning hearts and consolidating foundations; weigh both domestic and international situations; make improving livelihoods and winning hearts the starting point of development; promote inter-ethnic exchange and integration; keep Tibetan Buddhism on the path of sinicization and manage religious affairs by law; put ecology first; and strengthen the Party, above all its political foundations. The ten musts became the official charter for all Tibet work, reproduced in full in the State Council’s 2023 Tibet white paper.

Sources: Xinhua readouts of the May 2014, April 2016, and August 2020 meetings; New York Times, Xinjiang Papers reporting, November 16, 2019, with Reuters and AFP reporting of China’s responses; NPC decision of May 28, 2020, and Standing Committee legislative records; State Council Information Office, Tibet white paper, November 2023.

11. Boarding schools and the aftermath of the UN Xinjiang assessment, 2022–2023

Tibetan boarding schools. On February 6, 2023, three UN special rapporteurs—on minority issues, on the right to education, and on cultural rights—said they were very disturbed by Tibet’s residential school system, which they described as a mandatory large-scale programme to assimilate Tibetans into majority Han culture. Around one million Tibetan children were affected, they said: the vast majority of Tibetan schoolchildren, taught a curriculum centred on Han culture in Mandarin, with no substantive study of Tibetan language, history, or culture, and losing the ability to communicate easily with parents and grandparents in Tibetan. During the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights review that same month, China’s delegation confirmed the schools exist but denied they are compulsory or that Tibetan language is suppressed. Responding to a European Parliament resolution in December 2023, the Foreign Ministry said Tibet’s population is highly scattered, boarding is entirely voluntary, and students may go home every weekend and holiday. In August 2023 the United States announced visa restrictions on officials linked to the forced assimilation policy. The core dispute—voluntary educational provision versus structural assimilation—remains unresolved, because independent observers cannot operate freely in Tibet.

After the Xinjiang assessment. The OHCHR assessment of August 31, 2022 (see Section 3) was released minutes before High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet left office. China’s mission in Geneva rejected it as based on disinformation fabricated by anti-China forces, and Beijing submitted a lengthy rebuttal that was posted as an annex. Reuters had earlier reported that China lobbied diplomatic missions to block publication. On October 6, 2022, the UN Human Rights Council voted 19 to 17, with 11 abstentions, against even holding a debate on Xinjiang—one of the very few cases in the Council’s history in which a debate itself was refused.

The re-election timeline. Six weeks after the assessment appeared, the 20th Party Congress (October 16–22, 2022) returned Xi for a third term as general secretary on October 23. On March 10, 2023, the National People’s Congress re-elected him president and chairman of the Central Military Commission by 2,952 votes to none. The 2018 abolition of term limits was thereby completed in practice: none of the three top posts—Party, state, and military—now carries a time limit.

Sources: UN special rapporteurs’ joint statement, February 6, 2023 (UN News); CESCR review records, February 2023; Xinhua report of the Foreign Ministry briefing, December 20, 2023; Reuters reporting on the lobbying campaign and the Human Rights Council vote of October 6, 2022; Xinhua, 20th Party Congress and March 2023 NPC reports.

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