In the wake of China’s 20th Communist Party Congress, Xi Jinping rules over the most powerful totalitarian regime the world has ever seen. What hidden forces warped him into this staggeringly ambitious, deeply insecure, genocidal dictator?
While most of Xi’s life story remains obscured behind a veil of official secrecy, what we do know about his lived experience and personal worldview are troubling. If any of his biographies are to be believed, he is a man who almost certainly bears many deep and ugly scars. Only no one can see them, not even his spouse or his doctor. No one can see them because they are on the inside, tears across his mind and his soul.
Here are some of the reported incidents of abuse and psychological trauma he has suffered.
In October, at the 20th National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), General Secretary Xi Jinping set himself up for another decade as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, replaced his most economically literate Politburo colleagues with a phalanx of loyalists, and enshrined the Stalinist-Maoist concept of “struggle” as a guiding principle in the Party Charter. The effect was to turn the page on “reform and opening,” the term the CCP uses to describe the economic liberalization that began in the late 1970s and led to the explosive growth of the Chinese economy in the past...
What are the implications of a Chinese Communist Party victory for the future of American-style democracy? What would that mean for humankind?
Today it seems unthinkable, but it may be coming: totalitarianism expressed through a state-run, artificial intelligence system that knows billions of people better than they know themselves. What would that even look like? To avoid the numbness that comes with abstract, hypothetical thinking, open up your mind and make it a personal vision. Imagine you are part of the next generation. It’s you that’s being born into a future where China’s government has AI supremacy and global domination.
In today’s newsletter, we’ll take a dive into the scourge of Chinese phone scammers, explore the latest incident of corporate “de-Japanization,” and introduce a book that unpacks Beijing’s grand ambition to dominate the world.
Xi’s speeches make clear that he is committed to spreading China’s model of communism around the world.
For some time now, the ruler of China has been talking about destroying the United States and the liberal world order that Washington helped create in the wake of World War II. Uncovered documents and never-before-translated speeches shine light on what Xi Jinping has in mind. His words are disquieting...
In recent years, the CCP under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping has become more repressive internally and stronger externally. At the same time, it has evolved into a "digital totalitarian" in combination with Internet technology, which not only exerts influence on a global scale, but also affects the national security and international order of the United States. create a threat. From Hollywood to Ivy League University, from Silicon Valley on the West Bank to Wall Street on the East Bank, how does the CCP meticulously plan and plan its "global strategy"? Who has the upper hand in this competition between the US and China?
Matthew Pottinger is Institut Montaigne’s new Distinguished Visiting Fellow. He served in the White House for four years in senior positions on the National Security Council, including as Deputy National Security Advisor. He led work on the Indo-Pacific region, particularly the shift in China policy. Before his White House service, Pottinger spent some time in China as a reporter for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He was then deployed as a US Marine to Iraq and Afghanistan between 2007 and 2010.
In his first Institut Montaigne contribution, Pottinger focuses on the US approach to China, following the Biden administration’s China strategy. He examines this diplomatic engagement which aims to limit the Asian superpower’s increasingly aggressive actions. He calls on the US to act with urgency...