Xi Jinping emerges as forceful No. 1 – rewriting China’s power playbook

Not since the days of Mao Zedong has any one individual in China become so visible a leader or held so much control over the rising nation of 1.3 billion people as Xi Jinping – whose father was a prominent comrade of Chairman Mao. Under Xi’s grip in recent months, even civil society moderates have been harshly silenced – in what now appears to be a serious purification program of party and society.

His generation feels a very deep sense of responsibility. They feel, above all, that faced with a crisis, they must do something.

Li Datong, an intellectual and prominent former newspaper editor

The question is whether Xi has created such turmoil and so many enemies that he must become an ever-harsher authoritarian to maintain his grip. (Intellectuals in Beijing seriously debate whether Xi is a hardline authoritarian or a new kind of totalitarian, the latter having truly unknown implications.) All this comes as International Monetary Fund forecasters say China has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest economy. There are some caveats, but the milestone for China is also a symbolic setback for the U.S., where a slower-than-hoped-for recovery from the recession has coincided with widening income gaps between the rich and a stagnating middle class.

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