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Xi Jinping is currently the President of People's Republic of China, and the General Secretary of the Communist Party, having attained the position of "core" leader in 2013.
Born on June 15, 1953 in Beijing, China, Xi Jinping is currently married to Peng Liyuan who is both a major general in the Chinese army and a popular folk singer. Together they have a daughter, Xi Mingze, who is reported to have graduated from Harvard University in the United States in 2014.
Politically, Xi is sometimes referred to as a "princeling" which is a person who ascends to power and becomes a senior official due in part to their family connections. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revolutionary in his time and one of the founding fathers of the Communist Party. However, this notoriety resulted in his father being imprisoned for his political activism, and at age 15 Xi Jinping was sent to Liangjiahe, a remote village where he earned the reputation of being an affable and honest.
Recognized as being intellectually gifted, he attended Tsinghua University in Beijing, a university that has a clear imprint on the top political leaders in the current Chinese leadership, and majored in chemical engineering. Despite this connection to the halls of Chinses political power, Jinping had applied to become a member of the Communist Party at least 9 different times, and every time was rejected because of his father's political connections. Finally, he was allowed to join the party in 1974.
His first official job working for the Chinese government was as a personal secretary to the Minister of Defense Geng Biao. As he ascended though the ranks working for a number of Chinese government leaders, he gained the reputation that had proceeded him as a youth in Liangjiahe - a man who was likeable and who had a great amount of integrity. These personal qualities would in part be responsible for his rise to power. Becoming vice-president in 2008, Xi Jinping has been given the reputation of someone who has no tolerance for corruption in the Communist Party. Twice he has been called in to troubleshoot scandals in the past that have been the result of corruption.
His current dual roles as President of China and Chief of the Communist Party have placed him in a position of considerable power. He has worked to develop strategic economic alliances that will allow China to exert its power as the world’s 2nd largest economy. Xi Jinping has acquired the reputation of being pro-business, and in one of his early speeches after rising to power said, "corruption, taking bribes, being out of touch with the people, undue emphasis on formalities and bureaucracy must be addressed with great efforts." He later would say that there are instances where government must be limited and allow non-government solutions to a problem to be adopted.
Wielding power that few political figures have attained in China, Xi Jinping will be an international force to be reckoned with for at least the next ten years. Currently focused on rebuilding China's national infrastructure, he has moved forward into the 21st century, becoming publicly visible through Facebook and the Chinese social media outlet Sina Weibo.
(By Biopage writers. Photo credit Narendra Modi and Charlie Fong. Please contact Biopage for inaccuracy.)
Time 2017: The 100 Most Influential People
May 16, 2017 7 years agoFascinating, smart, forever the iconoclast breaking the mold, Xi Jinping has a confident determination to assert a new role for China on the world stage. The evidence is everywhere of late: from joining with the U.S. to gavel in a historic climate-change commitment many once dismissed as a pipe dream, to a coming-out speech in Davos that announced an aspiration to lead in the global order\u2014something his predecessors dismissed as a burden belonging to other nations, always protecting instead China's prerogative to develop at its own pace. Embracing a new role among nations will no doubt bring with it more challenging choices and realities. Those expectations can collide with a path China still guards\u2014on human rights, on international law in the South China Sea or in the constructive role a motivated China could always play in resolving the provocations of a petulant Kim Jong Un next door. But there's no mistaking the potential that one day we might look back and say that Xi's time at the helm marked the inflection point for his country and his people. (By John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State. Photo credit Jason Alden-Bloomberg / Getty Images)
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