>This comes from a devout Marxist whose family was in the comunist party ranks right from its inception. And Xi was a princeling with a much stronger party ped

>This comes from a devout Marxist whose family was in the comunist party ranks right from its inception. And Xi was a princeling with a much stronger party pedigree, who survived work camps with ostensibly a renewed faith in the party. Wikileaks / CIA dossier on him by former politburo member and family friend of Xi summarized Xi as basically not too smart, but a believer. Not too smart comports with lines in this article, but labelling Xi as not a believer reads more like purity test from disgruntled ideological rival with a bone to pick. Like any political system, there are factions, CCP reformist like Cai Xia and Ren Zhiqiang were understandingly upset over Xi's direction for the country, but their analysis should be interpreted as partisan pieces like political writing elsewhere. Cai herself supported Rens essay denouncing Xi's covid response early in the outbreak, they subscribed to the idea that democratically reforms would have been in a much better position to handle the the epidemic - they believed covid was China chernobyl. There are many pro-reformers who felt the same way at the time. They were spectacularly wrong. Ren got purged, Cai's in exile now, just another dissident writing for a new audience. Her words should be interpreted accordingly. This entire essays is basically, look CCP under Xi is full of theatre and politics... like politics everywhere, through all time. It's entertaining but not particularly illuminating. I wasn't a big fan of Xi, I knew he was a believer, he's not charismatic, he didn't seem very smart, certainly not paramount leader material, but in retrospect he has delivered much more than what I thought he was capable of. And now that inevitable great powers competition is heating up, I don't think anyone else's reforms and priorities would have postured China to address this rivalry as comprehensively as Xi. Particularly, Xi's military restructuring and modernization would not have occurred under Bo Xilai who was good friends with the corrupt and ineffective military old guard, enough that there were rumors of a coup over his purging. That alone makes Xi the best timeline for long term Chinese interests considering US containment efforts against China predates Xi. He's probably not the best man for the job, but out of all available options in the politburo, and there weren't many, he was the right one.