By Prashanth Parameswaran
Despite oppressive policies, China’s leader is the most popular in the world. But for how long?
Coming of age is never easy, becoming a superpower even less so, and China has had it harder than most. It is true, China was a glorious empire back when the Greeks were but a twinkling in Minos’ eye, but the sun had hardly set on the Ming Dynasty when a new and stronger Japan emerged from the ashes of the brutal Sengoku period and the British began breathing down the neck of Qing elite. And domestically, for a long time, much of China was an ungovernably violent landscape. Seven of the ten bloodiest conflicts in human history took place here, three of them (the Taiping Rebellion, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Chinese Civil War) within the last two centuries, accounting for almost 48 million deaths.
The result can hardly be surprising: a heavy-handed response to any perceived threat. China’s new cybersecurity laws and the recent crackdowns on lawyers and journalists mean many young Chinese must now endure greater constraints on freedom than they’ve ever known. Meanwhile, China’s aggression in the South China Sea is promising to do for its image what the Iraq War did for the United States.
But even while President Xi plays to his dark side, the public continues to refer to him as “Xi Dada” (literally “Xi Bigbig,” more often translated as “Uncle Xi”). In 2014, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation published a paper by Tony Saich, revealing Xi as the world’s most popular leader—both at home and abroad.
The Washington Post’s Simon Denyer explains that Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and “folksy style” have boosted his domestic support, while his popularity abroad can be traced to mass appeal in Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, Indonesia, and other nations that “range from geopolitical allies to beneficiaries of Chinese investment and countries where China’s economic model is attractive.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat