Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping
by Francois Bougon
(Hurst £12.99)

ONE of the most powerful politicians on the planet, Chinese leader Xi Jinping still remains a puzzle to many Western observers.

[[{"type":"media","fid":"8494","view_mode":"inlineright","instance_fields":"override","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":""}]]Taking the helm at a crucial point in China’s development path as it rises to middle-income levels, Xi’s focus on advancing his country’s modernisation, while firmly rejecting Western economic and political models, has provoked considerable panic among Atlanticist liberals and corporate conservatives alike.

The book’s title may be slightly misleading, perhaps suggesting some on-the-couch psychological portrait of Xi. Instead, Francois Bougon has made a rare journalistic attempt to sketch out the various intellectual influences that Xi has absorbed over the years and, for those who take the trouble to read his speeches and writings, their influence in guiding his public statements and policy.

Bougon spent five years in Beijing with French news agency AFP and is a specialist writer for Le Monde. Perhaps as a result of his background in the much more theoretically minded milieu of the French media, Bougon attempts to offer a perspective on Xi’s ideological and philosophical influences.

It’s one of the enduring weaknesses of the British corporate media that it rarely takes these elements seriously, especially in foreign politics, and it’s unlikely any mainstream British journalist would even attempt such an undertaking as Bougon’s – The Guardian’s retired China expert John Gittings being the only exception that springs to mind.

Bougon places Xi within an intellectual universe shaped by thousands of years of traditional Chinese civilisation, with its writers, philosophers and statesmen, as well as the ideas of Chinese Marxism. He’s clearly much stronger on the first stream than the second and, in doing so, he references a number of French-language sources and commentaries that will be less familiar to English readers and which provide an interesting counterpoint to the Anglophone mindset.

The author makes a serious attempt to link Xi’s political strategy to wider ideological, cultural and literary influences, notably Mao Zedong, but also the once-reviled Confucius, as China navigates the rapids of demographic and social upheavals during which state and party leaders must attempt to balance unparalleled change with stability and order.

There are references to less familiar characters, such as Lei Feng, the mythologised model of Maoist selflessness, and the ancient political philosopher Han Fei. Xi regularly alludes to the Chinese classics, insisting that learning from the outside world does not demand abandonment of China’s own rich cultural legacy but its rejuvenation.

Nonetheless, despite these refreshing aspects of Bougon’s approach, his conclusions are familiar enough. Xi is a “neo-authoritarian” seeking intellectual legitimacy for his power and the book is described on the publisher’s website as part of an “eye-opening series of biographies of infamous politicians” and thus Xi sits alongside Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the far-right French National Rally party’s Marine Le Pen. The inference is as clumsy as it is obvious.

Bougon’s book will fill a certain niche for now but more balanced appraisals of the man behind Xi Jinping Thought is sorely needed by Western readers.