A graphic novel in French by Éric Meyer and Gianluca Costantini turns out to be one of Xi’s best biographies.
February 20, 2025
These days, you can read several voluminous biographies of Xi Jinping. Or, you can just buy a comic book in French, “Xi Jinping. L’empereur du silence” (“Xi Jinping: The Emperor of Silence,” Paris: Delcourt, 2024) by veteran journalist and long-time Beijing correspondent for European media Éric Meyer and Italian comic artist Gianluca Costantini. All the essential is there, and nothing is censored for fear of Chinese reactions, as it happens too often in other Western accounts.
The graphic novel emphasizes that meritocracy as a way of selecting the ruling class in China is a myth. Most Chinese leaders are part of the “red aristocracy,” a nomenklatura made out of the children and grandchildren of those who were with Mao during the Civil War. One of them was Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, who played an important role in the revolution and the Long March. Not less and in fact more important was Xi Jinping’s mother, Qi Xin, a strict Marxist ideologist who managed for many years the Communist Party school for cadres, a key Chinese institution. She is a figure to whom the graphic novel returns continuously.
The book depicts the comfortable and even exceptional lifestyle of Xi’s family in the 1950s. They had a villa, a chauffeur-driven car, and a personal cook, at a time when many Chinese were still struggling with hunger. Yet, although the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, some around Chairman Mao started purging the Party of leaders accused of having too many privileges some years before.
Xi’s father fell out of favor in 1962, lost all his official positions, and was sent to work in a watch factory 800 kilometers from Beijing. Xi Jinping had to leave the exclusive school for children of high bureaucrats he was attending and was sent to work in a destitute rural village with poor food and hygiene. Faithful to the lessons of his mother, he never defended his father and repeated that whatever it does “the Party is always right.” This allowed him, after many attempts that failed due to his father’s situation, to be admitted to the Communist Youth League and finally to the Communist Party at age 18.
The graphic novel insists on how Xi’s mother from her influential position constantly organized her son’s career, especially after her husband was rehabilitated following the death of Mao. She also corrected Xi’s mistakes. Xi first married the daughter of an ambassador. It seemed a good match, but it wasn’t, as she cared for luxury more than for the Party. Xi’s mother quietly arranged a divorce and Xi married Peng Liyuan, a singer who was the epitome of loyalty to the Party. When Xi took a lover, his mother prevailed on then General Secretary of the CCP Jiang Zemin to summon him to his office. Jiang explained to Xi that this was the kind of peccadillo that could destroy a promising career.
His mother arranged other things too. For instance, when Xi ran for the Central Committee in 2002, he was not initially elected among the 180 delegates. However, a seat no. 181 was created just for him, allowing him to join the Central Committee and rise to power.
Xi’s mother, who is still alive and will turn 99 this year, had long planned that her son would one day become General Secretary of the CCP and President of China. To achieve this aim, we see in the graphic novel how she taught him to always give the impression to live a frugal life, avoiding any exhibition of a lavish lifestyle and avoiding sexual and economic scandals. Some of the latter, the book claims, came dangerously close to Xi, as in his various provincial appointments he did befriend businessmen connected with organized crime. But he was never accused of any major wrongdoing, which was not the case for his main rivals for the top position, who were eliminated one after the other. Some of them might have tried to stop the irresistible progress of Xi by assassinating him, the book claims, but these attempts received little publicity although those responsible did go to jail.
Xi also persuaded his colleagues that he was the right man for the top job through his ruthless repression of any form of dissent, which he explained was the only way to preserve the CCP from the sad fate of the Communist parties in Russia and Eastern Europe.
On March 14, 2013, Xi Jinping became President of China. He benefited initially from a favorable economic conjuncture but, the book claims, made mistakes due to his deep distrust of the West and spirit of revenge against what he saw as past Western arrogance towards China. For this reason, he sent aggressive and even impolite diplomats to top Western capitals and came increasingly close to anti-Western powers such as Russia and Iran—although the graphic novel claims that Xi and Putin do not really trust each other.
The book emphasizes the repression of all religions and the ruthless crackdown on Uyghurs, Tibetans, and pro-democracy Hong Kong activists, as well as Xi’s catastrophic management of the COVID pandemic. It also describes the Orwellian system of social credit, based on a comprehensive network of highly advanced computers capable of managing the data of 1.4 billion Chinese citizens. Each citizen has a social credit file, which is updated with various types of information from the Internet, including medical records and traffic violations. The computer processes this information and assigns a score out of 300 points. Those with less than 180 points cannot be employed by the government, board trains or planes, or receive bank loans. If you are one of the 17 million Chinese blacklisted for low social credit, it may even happen that those who call you on the phone will receive an automatic message warning them that they were dealing with a bad citizen.
Xi has both been compared and compares himself to great leaders of the past, including Mao. However, the book argues, his real model is Genghis Khan. Xi has the same ambition to become the “emperor of the world.” It is not a world most of us would like.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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