Nation States: Xi Jinping’s Rise and China’s Hidden Weaknesses

Steve Yates (0:02)

Welcome to Nation States with Yates, where we aim to serve as your personal national security advisor, helping you feel confident to engage in meaningful conversations with your friends, family, and those elected to represent you on all the issues that matter to the fate of our nation state. Today, we have a simple question. Who is Xi? Not who is a female member of the community. Who is Xi Jinping, the leader of China?

There's a number out there you probably haven't heard very much. It's the number of meetings that our president and the leader of China have had. If they go forward as planned, the next two meetings happen, both sides, President Trump and Xi Jinping will have met in person five times in about a year.

Think about that. Busan, South Korea, last October for APEC, Beijing in May, Washington in September, Shenzhen, China later this month for APEC again, and finally the G20 in Miami, Florida in December. By my count, that puts us on track for a record number of top leader summits in the history of US-China relations over such a brief period of time. The stakes are real too. Take rare earths, the minerals inside everything from your phone to a fighter jet. At Busan, Beijing agreed to pause its new export controls on them for about a year.

That pause is still on the table for Shenzhen and Miami, extended to January, but who knows where it goes beyond that. On this show, we've covered the big policy fights and where the negotiations stand. Tonight, I want to do something different. I want to talk about the man on the other side of the table. Who is Xi Jinping? How did he get to the top? And what kind of China is he building? That story almost never makes the evening news. But if you're going to make a deal with someone, you better know who you're dealing with. And it matters to you. It shapes what you pay for things that you buy, where the good jobs are getting built, and how much risk our country carries in the Pacific. So tonight, three things. First, how Xi Jinping rose to power and the irony at the heart of that story. Second, whether a more powerful Xi Jinping actually makes China stronger. And third, what a brand new Communist Party rule book tells us about whether Xi Jinping is confident or insecure. Then we'll talk about what it all means for Washington and for Main Street America. So with that, stick with us through a brief break, and we'll come in for our deep dive on who is Xi Jinping on Nation States with Yates. Stick with us. Thank you.

Welcome back to Nation States with Yates. So today we're going to talk about who is Xi Jinping, the leader of China. To understand Xi Jinping, you have to start with the man who wanted his job. His name is Bo Xilai. Back in 2011, Bo was one of the most famous politicians in China. He sat on the Politburo in the party's top two dozen or so leaders. He ran Chongqing, a huge city in China's southwest. Bo was one was like, was like China's most of China's officials. Most of them are careful, gray and quiet. Bo was a showman. He courted the cameras. He built a following. In Chongqing, he ran what he called Striking Back. It was a crackdown on organized crime. Some of the people it went after really were criminals, but it also hit his rivals, and it ran over due process, of course. He also ran a Singing Red campaign. That meant Mao era songs, slogans and nostalgia all over the city. He talked up something called Common Prosperity, a populist pitch about spreading the wealth around. A lot of people in the party's senior ranks didn't like what they saw. To them, it looked like a man building a personal following, and in the Communist Party of China, that's a dangerous thing.

Then in early 2012, it all came apart. On February 6, 2012, Bo's police chief, a man named Wang Lijun, walked into the American Consulate in the city of Chengdu. He asked for asylum, and he brought allegations with him. He claimed the boss's family was tied to the murder of a British businessman named Neil Haywood. Washington didn't grant him asylum. Wang ended up in Beijing's hands. There's a documentary on this story from a YouTube channel called Spectacles. I'd encourage you to check it out.

In it, Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, is heard explaining the decision. Here's how she put it. He did not fit any of the categories for the United States giving him asylum. There was no grounds on which we could offer that to him, but he kept saying he wanted to get the truth to Beijing. And the truth did get to Beijing. Boa's wife, Gu Kailai, was later convicted of Heywood's murder. And as that documentary tells it, the Politburo Standing Committee with Vice President Xi Jinping on board met and reached a unanimous decision. Boa's career was over.