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The red thread

Xi Jinping’s ideology of power
by
December 2024, no. 471

On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is shaping China and the world by Kevin Rudd

Oxford University Press, $54.95 pb, 624 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

The red thread

Xi Jinping’s ideology of power
by
December 2024, no. 471

How does Xi Jinping think? China’s leader since late 2012 is one of the most important but least accessible people in the world. He does not give interviews. His lieutenants do not leak to reporters. His associates do not write tell-all memoirs. The Chinese Communist Party is a secretive organisation that dominates the country’s information ecosystem by censoring speech and crushing dissent. We therefore know precious little about how decisions get made in Beijing.

Pundits abhor a vacuum and fill this void with what a journalist once described to me as ‘fan fiction’ about Chinese politics. Rumours about military coups, thinly sourced reports on factional strife, and bold claims of an imminent Taiwan invasion are staples of the genre. China watchers can disagree on basic, critical questions regarding Xi’s thinking: How long will he rule? Does he care about economic growth? Would domestic weakness make foreign aggression more or less likely?

On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is shaping China and the world

On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is shaping China and the world

by Kevin Rudd

Oxford University Press, $54.95 pb, 624 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

From the New Issue

Comment (1)

  • Seriously, this construction of an ordinary individual human as some sort of evil genius is completely and utterly absurd. In the reviewer's defence, he has perhaps limited experience of the banality of happenings at the highest level, but Kevin Rudd can claim no such excuse.
    Posted by Patrick Hockey
    29 November 2024

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