Party of One

December 1, 2022

When the Chinese government refused to renew Wall Street Journal reporter Wong's press credentials and shoved him from mainland China in 2019, he moved to Hong Kong and continued reporting on Chinese politics from afar. Here, he relies on conversations with Party insiders and grassroots members, scholars and diplomats, plus analyses of official speeches and documents to offer a portrait of Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and his rise to extraordinary power.

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Starred review from March 15, 2023
A respected journalist combines history, headlines, and personal reflections in a careful analysis of China's leader-for-life. As the unquestioned leader of the world's most-populous nation, Xi Jinping (b. 1953) may be the most powerful person on the planet. However, as is often the case in China, separating facts from myths is a difficult process. Wong, who covered China for the Wall Street Journal since 2014, is a good person to accept the challenge, and his critical biography synthesizes a huge body of research. Wong tracks through Xi's formative period, including several years of exile to a hardscrabble rural province during the Cultural Revolution, and his slow climb through local politics toward the top. With a series of sponsors and mentors, he made a name for himself as a supercommitted party man, and in the post-Deng era he became the figure most likely to reassert central control and claim a dominant position for China on the global stage. Uniquely, once he became the country's leader, he integrated the three crucial roles of party boss, head of state, and commander in chief of the military, and he pushed through changes that allowed him to remain in office permanently. Intelligent but not especially charismatic, his power stems from his institutional titles, but this reveals that his system of governance is brittle. Nothing moves unless he is personally involved. Wong points out that "his new-look Communist Party has come to resemble, in some ways, the imperial bureaucracies of old--bigger and better organized, but no less autocratic, rigid, and plagued by succession woes." The author suggests that when Xi departs or dies, there is likely to be a dangerous power vacuum. In a concluding note, Wong notes that he was expelled from China in 2019 for reasons that were never made clear. It adds a personal dimension to an authoritative, clear-minded study. A penetrating and timely unraveling of the personality and impact of a strongman president.

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