What precisely is his ‘political thought' now established in the Chinese ConstitutionIJ
President Xi Jinping of China was the first leader of modern Communist China to have been born after Mao Tse-tung overran the Nationalist forces and established the hold of the Communists in that country. And make no mistake, he is what they call in China, a ‘princeling', the son of a top Communist Party of China (CPC) official, Xi Zhongxun. But Xi Jinping and his family suffered immensely during the cultural revolution — his father was first purged from the CPC and later jailed, and young Jinping was sent to work in a labour camp from which he ran away and was later arrested by Mao's cultural revolutionaries. Sent to work in another labour camp, he managed to distinguish himself, yet these experiences left in young Xi Jinping a belief that the nation Mao had created was being dragged down. And this small historical lesson explains some of the rationale behind Jinping's desire to see his political thoughts enshrined in the Chinese Constitution.
Speak to young Chinese today about Mao and the leader — venerated officially with his portrait hanging down Tiananmen Square and his visage on every Chinese banknote — comes across as someone perceived to have left China nearly broken. It is apparent that Xi Jinping's thought, molded by the unfairness of the purges during the terrifying Cultural Revolution, reflect that of younger Chinese citizens. The thought process, it appears, is that while Mao united and modernised China after a century of colonial domination and civil war, and Deng Xiaoping built the foundations of its economic rise and made it the factory of the world, Xi Jinping's thought is to make it a political powerhouse globally and reclaim China's mythical status as the ‘Middle Kingdom' lying between heaven and earth. But how does Xi Jinping hope to achieve this slightly esoteric aimIJ His first five years haven't exactly seen a stellar success. There have been badly planned territorial land grabs in both the South China Sea and a stupid attempt in the Doklam plateau. China, while mollycoddling Kim Jong-un of North Korea, has not managed to keep the nuclear leader of the absolutist state in check. The One Belt, One Road (OBOR) corridor which is meant to secure construction contracts for Chinese companies across the world has been questioned by several world leaders. The example of Hambantota in Sri lanka is also a bit of a disaster — an expensive deep-water port and airport project which is deep in the red, it was a project built by on the hubris of the Rajapaksa political family and now a Chinese company will probably have to run it to save face.
Of course, India should also learn a bit from the "Xi Jinping thought" of foreign expansionism. The first learning would be to assist Indian companies acquire natural resources and construction projects abroad which successive governments have proven themselves to be spectacularly incompetent at. The Indian diplomatic corps might be chuffed after Doklam, but on the whole their inability to deal with China's geo-economic prowess will stifle India's diplomatic efforts. After all, huge amounts of Chinese money have also flowed into India distorting several industries. China wants to change the world's statusquo and is using money to do that. Xi Jinping thought, it appears, is to use the power of money. He might have purged his opponents, much like Mao did his, and used ‘corruption' as an excuse, but China and Xi Jinping's rise is premised on greasing the palms of others. India must be wary.