Personality cult is an occurrence which is against democracy. Such a system revolves around a figure that is repressive to their subjects. The autocratic form of government is put in place by dictators ruling a state. The personality cult involves the establishment of an ideal person by a president who is revered and glorified by the citizens. The country of China has experienced political leaders who enshrine the personality cult. Just as Claude Helvétius once posited, “every period has its great men, and if they are lacking, it invents them” (Leon, 1930). The observation is in tandem with evident efforts by men to make their own history. Nevertheless, such history is not made wishfully, or under selected circumstances, but under existing phenomena deeply rooted in the past. Therefore, one can argue that the recent concerns about the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, tactics to consolidate power are justified because they invoke memories of similar approaches preceding authoritarian rulers of the country, notably, Mao Zedong. There is a strong agreement among political and policy analysts that Xi Jinping employs the cult of personality to consolidate power. Hart (2016) argued that the possibility of Xi Jinping using their personality cult and power at their disposal to create the Cult of Xi Jinping could not be ruled out. Cult of personality refers to a tactic of concentrating all the power in a single charismatic leader within a totalitarian state, leading to almost creation of a deity of that leader through state propaganda. This paper investigates and analyses critical pointers towards use of cult of personality by Xi Jinping to consolidate power in China.
According to Reuters (2017), a top academic official in the ruling Communist Party reiterates what has long been held by the country’s new generation leaders, that China has learn from its history and would not entertain the formation of a Mao Zedong-style cult of personality around the President Xi Jinping. However, there is contradicting evidence showing that Xi Jinping is indeed bent on consolidating power through cult of personality. The case of “Little Red App” corroborates this argument. Ramzy (2015) observed that the new app launched in China, features President Xi Jinping’s remarks and works, and follows in the wake of other cult personality tactics that portray the president as model of modern multimedia leader. For instance, being praised in a song, appearance in cartoons, tracking of their travels in a dedicated Weibo account, and translation of their book on governance into nine languages.
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The “Little Red App” and associated media platforms have raised concerns that they are targeted at achieving integration function, thus drawing comparisons with Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book. According to Hart (2016), integration function was achieved during the Mao era through the practice of daily reading of the book. Consequently, the Little Red Book became a physical leader symbol that was regularized and integrated into state institutions and daily life practices. There are fears that “ Little Red App” would eventually serve the integration function that seeks to stabilize the society by coercing new institutions to integrate into systems dominated by leader symbols.
Blackwill and Campbell (2016) highlight various instances that lead to the conclusion that Xi Jinping has sustained a nascent cult of personality. For instance, the use of increasingly strident rhetoric in defending the country’s national interests, intuitive grasp of public sentiment, and a foreign policy that places them on the global stage. President Xi Jinping, in the short term they have been in power, has initiated sweeping actions and ambitious directive that have fundamentally changed the way China’s domestic and foreign policies. Through popular anticorruption campaigns, senior party and military officials have been cowed, allowing the president to amass dominating power. The overall outcome has been a progressive end to China’s collective and consensual leadership structure, marginalization of bureaucracy, and the president’s assumption of the role of central decision maker in all matters of importance (Blackwill & Campbell, 2016).
The Chinese president Xi Jinping is laying the foundations of an authoritarian rule. The promotion of his image as model president consists use of personality cult which has been used before in China and other countries such as Korea and Cuba. Personality cult endorses totalitarian leaders who do not encourage democracy exercising in their jurisdictions. Therefore, it is apparent that President Xi Jinping’s attempts at cult personality have been expansive. The domination of Beijing’s public spaces by China dream art, a brand created by Xi Jinping, which is also taking substantial advertising space, is a case in point. In addition, China dream has been integrated into the education systems with students being encouraged to write their China Dreams on "dream walls" on campus (Blackwill & Campbell, 2016). Xi Jinping has also focused on legitimacy promotion through images and propaganda, tactics used successfully by Mao. For instance, the calling of the president “Xi Dada”, making public confessions of guilt, and emphasis on Confucian values and filial piety through the China dream are all aimed at bolstering Xi Jinping’s image and legitimacy (Blackwill & Campbell, 2016). The Chinese president has also achieved mass mobilization using their leader symbols, notably, the documented tours and travels similar to those of their predecessor Deng Xiaoping. Critics and analysists have been reserved in comparing the cult of Xi to the Mao cult and the Kim dynasty, but there is a consensus that the cult personality exists to some spectrum, and so do fears of its overall implications on China’s domestic and foreign policies.
References
Blackwill, R., & Campbell, K. (2016). Xi Jinping on the Global Stage. New York: Council for Foreign Relations .
Hart, B. (2016). Creating the cult of Xi Jinping: The Chinese dream as a leader symbol. Cornell International Affairs Review , 9 (2).
Helvétius, quoted in Leon Trotskii, My life . Retrieved March 14, 2018 from: www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ ch41.htm.
Ramzy, A. (Apr, 2015). Xi Jinping’s Sayings Now Available in ‘Little Red App’. The New York Times. Retrieved March 14, 2018 from: https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/xi-jinpings-sayings-now-available-in-little-red-app/.
Reuters. (Nov, 2017). No cult of personality around Xi, says top China party academic. Retrieved March 14, 2018 from: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-politics-xi/no-cult-of-personality-around-xi-says-top-china-party-academic-idUSKBN1D61DD?il=0.
