Why Is Xi Jinping's Generation So Exceptionally Cruel?

The most shocking impression the CCP's 20th Party Congress left on the mainland — and on the world — was not simply that Xi Jinping purged every CCP faction he distrusted and replaced the entire decision-making tier with his own cronies from his years climbing the bureaucratic ladder — that is, the men who pledged their loyalty to him while he served in Hebei, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. Although this move by Xi Jinping went even further than anything Mao Zedong ever did — for even Mao, though he would only employ the loyal, still paid lip service to drawing talent from every corner — Xi's naked reliance on nothing but his own clique of cronies is stunning enough in itself. And yet, compared with the spectacle of Xi Jinping signaling for Hu Jintao to be physically escorted out of the hall, even this consolidation of political power drew somewhat less attention, because the topic that kept the international community and the mainland public alike buzzing without letup was Hu Jintao being waved off and marched out of the conference hall by Xi Jinping.

Hu Jintao was not merely Xi Jinping's predecessor — he was also the single most important factor enabling Xi Jinping's swift consolidation of power. None of the CCP leaders before Xi Jinping had truly held ultimate power; they were merely front-of-house managers, while real power remained in the hands of CCP elders who had retired without truly relinquishing control. Former CCP general secretaries Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, Jiang Zemin during the years before Deng Xiaoping's death, and Hu Jintao himself, all had to defer to the power brokers behind the scenes or to a clique of CCP elders. But Hu Jintao adopted the resolute approach of retiring completely and unconditionally, severing his own power entirely and thereby cutting off, once and for all, the elders' ability to manipulate power from behind the scenes. Without Hu Jintao's assistance in retiring so completely, Xi Jinping would not only have failed to swiftly seize actual control of the CCP — even if he had eventually gained the upper hand in a prolonged power struggle with the elders behind the scenes, there is no telling how long that might have taken, let alone whether he could have achieved the dominant position he holds today.

Whether Xi Jinping's brazen, unconcealed personal direction of Hu Jintao's removal in full view of the world's media is read, as some commentators have it, as an open, flamboyant display of dictatorship aimed at purging the Communist Youth League faction, or, as some language experts have parsed it, as a coup carried out through an on-the-spot swap of the Politburo lineup — either way, it highlights the extraordinary cruelty with which Xi Jinping repays kindness with enmity. And such ruthless, unsentimental betrayal is by no means unique to Xi Jinping — it is a shared trait among the ambitious figures of the CCP's so-called ‘red second generation.’ Take Bo Xilai, for example, widely regarded as far more capable than Xi Jinping — himself a red-second-generation figure hand-picked by the CCP, who had already climbed to the rank of Politburo member. Bo once declared, without the slightest reservation, that once he held ultimate power he would kill five hundred thousand capitalists who had grown wealthy. That Bo Xilai, once in power, intended a mass slaughter of people who had prospered under Communist rule was no offhand remark made on a whim — for even while he was merely the Party boss of Chongqing alone, he could not wait to persecute local private entrepreneurs through his ‘sing red, strike black’ campaign, and even proudly invited senior Politburo officials, Xi Jinping included, to come observe and cheer on his killing grounds.

What Xi Jinping has done since taking supreme power may differ in method from what Bo Xilai did, but in cruelty and regressive intent, Xi is, if anything, worse than Bo. In pursuit of dragging the mainland back to a political landscape as tightly controlled as it was under Mao, Xi Jinping has called on the Chinese people to be ready to ‘eat grass for a few years,’ and more recently has even developed the theory that ‘socialism must be paid for in lives’ — meaning he is prepared to see mass starvation return, on a catastrophic scale, rather than deviate from his chosen course. Generally speaking, the first generation of autocrats who seize power through violence tends to be extremely vicious and brutal, while the second generation and those that follow tend to grow relatively weaker, and may even gradually develop a more orderly, tolerant style of rule. But the CCP has dominated the mainland for more than seventy years now — by historical standards, that spans more than three generations — and yet its despotic rule shows no sign of relaxing; if anything, Xi Jinping's generation has become even more cruel. What factors could produce such a reversal of the normal historical pattern?

The first factor, of course, lies in the circumstances of Xi Jinping's and Bo Xilai's childhood and youth, since this stage of life plays a decisive role in shaping a person's consciousness and character. Family bloodline undoubtedly played a crucial role for the Xi-Bo generation. Although the Xi and Bo families both suffered persecution during the Mao era, this experience awakened only a small minority of victims to any real reckoning; the overwhelming majority, despite their painful experiences, continued to see themselves as members of the red dynasty's privileged elite, and, having suffered persecution they could never escape, fell into a kind of Stockholm syndrome — striving instead, through fanatical displays of loyalty, to win back their sense of belonging. Family influence occupies a particularly important place within broader social influence: during the Cultural Revolution, in order to demonstrate his loyalty to the Party, Bo Xilai broke several of his own father Bo Yibo's ribs by kicking him, and Bo Yibo, far from being upset, declared with delight that his son's ruthlessness showed he had the makings of a CCP leader. As for Xi Jinping, after his mother escaped from the place where she had been detained during the Cultural Revolution and made her way home, she then, braving a torrential downpour, personally escorted her own son back to that same place of detention without a moment's pause. This kind of merciless cruelty displayed between the closest of blood relations undoubtedly served as an unforgettable, formative example for Xi Jinping's generation.

And the personal experiences of danger and brutality that Xi Jinping, Bo Xilai, and others like them went through only reinforced their own capacity for cruelty, moving it from mere awareness into lived, internalized practice. During the Cultural Revolution, Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai were both well-known figures among the red second generation of veteran cadres' children in Beijing; most Beijing residents of that era who knew anything about the circle of veteran cadres' children would have recognized their names. Both men were also detained at various points for their conduct during the Cultural Revolution, whether in study classes, juvenile detention centers, or prisons — all of which served as crucibles where the CCP, through cruel methods, brainwashed and destroyed people's humanity. It is difficult for anyone who has endured such destruction to emerge with an undistorted, unwarped character, and for red-second-generation figures like Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai — raised within the Communist family tradition and burning with ambition besides — this experience could only make their capacity for cruelty more entrenched and more thorough.

Of course, the most fundamental and decisive factor behind such cruelty is the CCP's own religion — the so-called Marxist-Leninist theory of violence. The CCP has never concealed the fact, having declared it in black and white for all the world to see, that it seeks to annihilate every class and build a world in which only its own followers are permitted to survive. This cruel doctrine, cloaked in the banner of justice and salvation, has unleashed the most savage, bloodthirsty, and dark aspects of human nature; within the Party's doctrine, and in the eyes of its fanatically devoted followers, any degree of cruelty and bloodlust is instead transformed into ultimate truth. That is why Zeng Zhi, the wife of Tao Zhu, in the memoirs she wrote in her old age, showed not the slightest remorse but instead recounted her bloody past with evident pride, treating the killings she once carried out as an expression of the Party's needs and of her own loyalty. Zhou Enlai not only brutally massacred more than a dozen members of Gu Shunzhang's family, young and old alike, but also killed the very friend who had risked everything to rescue him from prison. Liu Shaoqi, for his part, kicked a man who had once saved him while that man was being detained and investigated by the CCP, sending him straight to the execution ground to be shot. This inborn cruelty among CCP followers is precisely the loyalty to Party spirit that they strive so hard to pursue and express — for having no humanity at all is exactly what Party spirit means to the CCP. So one should never expect the cruelty of the Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai generation to fade or soften over time.