China’s Heir Apparent
By HO PIN
NYT
IT is a deeply ingrained belief in China that a young novice starting out in the real world must earn a degree, or at least spend some time in the West. “Gilding,” or “du-jin” as it’s called in Chinese, boosts the person’s credentials and chances of success. Nowhere is this belief more apparent than in politics. For a new leader, strutting on the White House lawn and shaking hands with the president of the United States validates his status as a true statesman and confirms his country’s rising power.
Ten years ago, China’s current president, Hu Jintao, made the rounds in Washington before taking the top spot. His meeting with President George W. Bush was widely seen in China as his official debut on the world stage.
The tradition continues on Tuesday as Vice President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington. Mr. Xi is slated to become general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party later this year and China’s president in early 2013.
The public sees Mr. Xi as a man of the people. When Mr. Xi was 9, his father, Xi Zhongxun, who had fought in the Communist revolution, was purged from the party by Mao. The father was detained and imprisoned and spent 16 years in a labor camp, plunging the family into poverty. During the Cultural Revolution, a 15-year-old Mr. Xi was banished to a poverty-stricken village in northern China where, for seven years, he labored with peasants, eating corn chaff bread and sleeping in a flea-infested bed.
(More here.)
NYT
IT is a deeply ingrained belief in China that a young novice starting out in the real world must earn a degree, or at least spend some time in the West. “Gilding,” or “du-jin” as it’s called in Chinese, boosts the person’s credentials and chances of success. Nowhere is this belief more apparent than in politics. For a new leader, strutting on the White House lawn and shaking hands with the president of the United States validates his status as a true statesman and confirms his country’s rising power.
Ten years ago, China’s current president, Hu Jintao, made the rounds in Washington before taking the top spot. His meeting with President George W. Bush was widely seen in China as his official debut on the world stage.
The tradition continues on Tuesday as Vice President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington. Mr. Xi is slated to become general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party later this year and China’s president in early 2013.
The public sees Mr. Xi as a man of the people. When Mr. Xi was 9, his father, Xi Zhongxun, who had fought in the Communist revolution, was purged from the party by Mao. The father was detained and imprisoned and spent 16 years in a labor camp, plunging the family into poverty. During the Cultural Revolution, a 15-year-old Mr. Xi was banished to a poverty-stricken village in northern China where, for seven years, he labored with peasants, eating corn chaff bread and sleeping in a flea-infested bed.
(More here.)
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