Xi’s Three Stages: Power Grab, Grand Dreams, Total Unrestraint | Digging into China

Hi, I'm Dong Xiong. Welcome to Digging into China, where we take a deep dive into what's really happening in China and share some unique insights. Xi Jinping has now been in power for 13 years. Since he took office, his personal authority has reached its peak, but China's overall economic performance has been far worse than before. So what exactly has Xi Jinping done during these 13 years in power? And how should we evaluate these 13 years under him? In this episode, let's talk about that. If we dig deep into Xi Jinping's various policies, we can see that his time in office divides into three distinct stages. Each stage has different They are 2013 to 2017, 2017 to 2022, and 2022 to the present. And these three stages neatly match his three terms. First, let's look at 2013 to 2017. I call this the power seizure stage. During this period, Xi was actually quite deceptive. On the surface, he didn't show much difference from the Hu-Wen era, especially in economic policy. In his first term, Xi's overall economic thinking basically continued the Hu-Wen line, keep reforming and opening up, keep pushing foreign trade. For example, in his very first year in office, he set up the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, and later expanded the model nationwide. China also started hosting the China International Import Expo. Relations with the United States and the West were still relatively soft at this point. Overall, Xi still maintained the attitude from the Hu-Wen years of trying hard to integrate into globalization. You couldn't yet see the later attitude of wanting to decouple from the world or confront the West head-on. When it came to domestic capital, Xi was still following the strategy of letting the market economy lead. At the third plenum of the 18th Central Committee in 2013, he emphasized that the market should play the decisive role in resource allocation, stressing the importance of the market economy. At that time, his interference in capital really wasn't very deep. Of course, beyond economic policy, Xi imitated Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao in other ways too. In propaganda, he tried hard to appear as down-to-earth as possible, like a classic reform and opening leader. When Hu Jintao retired from both the Central Military Commission chairmanship and the presidency, Xi praised him lavishly, calling him a model of noble character and integrity. Early on, Xi also went to eat in Qingfeng steamed buns. Although the eating event still used a lot of planted crowd members, for once, they didn't shut down the roads or control traffic in advance. That counted as quite a heart-warming story back then. The media hyped it heavily afterwards to build up Xi's image as a clean, approachable leader. Naturally, during this stage, Xi's shortcomings in economic governance ability, along with some of his ambitions and his true governing colors started to show through a bit. On the economy, in 2015, he rolled out the houses are for living in, not for speculation policy, his first strong intervention in the market. The goal was to curb runaway housing prices and reduce local governments' reliance on land sales revenue. But in the end, because local governments dragged their feet and resisted, it fizzled out. Xi also launched the Xiong'an New Area project during this stage, calling it a millennium plan. It was a massive nationwide showcase of China's infrastructure building power. But looking at it now, Xiong'an has met the same fate as the houses are for living in. It, too, has basically stalled. In foreign affairs, although Xi didn't yet show his wolf warrior side right after taking office, he did launch the Belt and Road Initiative. This was the first time China openly stressed projecting its influence around the world. On opinion control, Xi also broke from the relatively loose, freewheeling approach of the Communist Party under Hu and Wang. He began the first round of tightening speech controls in China. For instance, the cyberspace administration started rising in importance during this stage. The phrase a party media must bear the party surname emerged. Real name registration for the internet also began taking shape. Still, because in this stage, whether in the economy, foreign policy, or internal control, Xi didn't push things to extremes and basically followed the broad direction set by Hu and Wang. China's economic growth wasn't seriously affected. This first stage was actually the best performing period economically during Xi's tenure. His other moves, tightening social controls, ramping up confrontation with the West, got overlooked because of his many reform and opening style appearances. Because his father, Xi Zhongxun, was a leading figure in reform and opening, and because of the anti-corruption campaign, a lot of people still thought Xi was China's second Hu Jintao. Some even believed he could be China's Chang Qingkuo, leading China towards democracy, with anti-corruption just a preparation for democratization. So, why did Xi seem somewhat normal in the first stage? Was it because his thinking back then was very different from now? No. It was because in the first stage, he simply didn't have the bandwidth to do those things. All his energy went into one thing, seizing power. This was the real main theme of his first stage. And the methods he used to seize power mainly fell into two categories. One was the visible public method everyone could see, anti-corruption. Right after taking office, Xi launched a massive sweeping anti-corruption drive that has continued right up to today. Of course, people still argue endlessly about the true nature of this campaign. Some say it's genuine anti-corruption, others say it's mainly about purging rivals. If we look at today's anti-corruption under Xi, it may now have become pure purges, mixed with real punishment of corrupted officials. But in his first term, it was far from pure. The aims of eliminating rivals was very obvious. Taking high-level caters, according to Bloomberg statistics, in the five years of Xi's first term, 33 Central Committee members were purged. Of those 33, 15 received a severe punishment of expulsion from the party. And among those 15 severely punished people, not a single one belonged to Xi's camp. Those 15 included people tied to Zhou Yongkang's faction, Zhou's military confidant Wang Jianping, Zhou's secretary Zhou Weisheng, the Petroleum Faction's CMPC chairman Jiang Jieming, former oil officials Yang Dongliang and Sun Shuling, the former softhead Li Zhongsheng who gifted Zhou Yongkang CCTV beauties, Lin Jihua and Lin's military loyalist Yang Jinshan. Beyond that, there were people linked to Wen Jiabao's faction, like Sun Zhengcai, seen as the next premier to pair with Hu Chunhua and Wen's associates Huang Xinguo, from Jiang Zemin's faction Wu Aiyin, Sun Huishan, Xiang Junbo, Tian Xiusi, and from the Youth League faction Wang Sanyuan. We can see this purge was highly targeted. The people who once opposed Xi, the Zhou Yongkang faction, were hit hardest and basically wiped out from the power core. Wen's faction, the Youth League faction, the Jiang's faction were all impacted to varying degrees. Only Xi's own camp remained untouched. Not only untouched, when people fell, others rose. As those original central committee members were removed, Xi's faction people stepped in to fill the vacancies and got promoted. A classic example is Li Chang. His predecessor was expelled, so at the third plenum of the 18th Central Committee, Li was added as a Central Committee member. Of course, besides the public anti-corruption everyone knew about, there was another less noticed behind-the-scene method of power seizure in the first stage, taking power away from the state council. Li Keqiang, who served as premier during this time, has long been called China's weakest premier ever. Don't even compare him to Wen Jiabao from the Huwen era. Li Keqiang's real authority was even less than Zhou Enlai's under Mao. The reason Li was so weak has a lot to do with Xi's maneuvering in the first stage. After taking office, Xi repeatedly suppressed and seized power from the state council. How exactly did he do it? By setting up all kinds of leading small groups. Things like the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, the Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization, the Central Leading Group for Foreign Affairs, and so on. And of course, Xi chaired every one of them. He kept adding more. Eventually, he personally chaired more than 20 of these groups. Many of these groups' responsibilities—regulating the internet, managing public opinion, handling diplomacy—originally belonged to the state council. But once the groups were created, those powers were quietly transferred to Xi. In this way, he indirectly weakened Li Keqiang's authority. The overall tone of Xi's first stage is actually very clear. Many elements of his later governing style were already visible tightening ideological control, moving away from who wants to hide your strengths, bide your time diplomacy, increasing intervention in the economy. But Xi didn't spend much energy on those things in the first stage. His core focus, his only real focus, was controlling power. And the results came fast. In just five years, he consolidated central power. Once that was done, China entered the second stage, the stage I call Xi Jinping's grand ambitions unleashed. In the second stage, the situation Xi faced was completely different. By then, he held real power. At the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, while he couldn't yet fully control all the Politburo Standing Committee seats, four out of seven seats were already from his faction. That gave him an absolute majority among the seven, a huge leap from five years earlier. In the second stage, Xi continued using anti-corruption and those leading small groups to transfer state council powers and solidify his grip. He ultimately completed the constitutional amendment in 2018 to remove term limits. More importantly, now that he had secured power, Xi could finally let loose. He finally had the space to pursue his grand visions in domestic and foreign policy. And from that moment on, the hard times really began for the Chinese people. In his second term, a series of very strange and extreme policies started rolling out one after another. Xi's policies completely abandoned the old reform and opening path. The notorious Common Prosperity Campaign began. A wave of attacks on domestic capitalists started. The result? Jack Ma was forced to leave the country and the Chinese private enterprise took massive hits. In real estate, the Three Red Lines policy came out, severely restricting loans to developers. Companies like Evergrande started going bankrupt. In the private sector, the Double Reduction policy hit the tutoring industry like a bomb, destroying it overnight. While one hand smashed the tutoring, the other reached into entertainment, film, TV, and gaming. Crackdowns hit everywhere. China's gaming and film industries entered a deep freeze. At the same time, the slogan of internal circulation appeared. Of course, the most classic was the During this period, Xi entered a mode of governing by whim. Whatever he dreamed up that day became policy. He completely abandoned any respect for the market and showed the true color of his economic thinking, heavy-handed government intervention. Of course, these policies are now several years in the past. They may even feel a bit dated. I wonder what everyone feels when they're hearing about them again today. Probably something like, oh, those are over. Nobody talks about them anymore. And when something feels over and nobody mentions it, that's usually a sign the policy has already failed and been abandoned. Zero COVID obviously collapsed. Common prosperity is basically never mentioned now. Jack Ma went from being exiled to being invited back to boost business confidence. Double reduction initially felt satisfying as it crushed tutoring. But it created massive youth unemployment. So eventually it fizzled and the authorities had to quietly loosen up on tutoring again. Given today's birth rates, the tutoring industry was probably dying anyway, even without Xi's help. Same with houses for living in. In 2020, three red lines badly hurt Evergrande. But at the time, they didn't stop the housing boom. It was the economic downturn starting in 2021 that really broke real estate. Once it truly collapsed, the attitude toward real estate flipped from suppression to protection. Now they won't even publish second-hand home prices anymore. The attitude towards film, TV, and gaming has also made a complete U-turn, especially in 2024 and 2025 with the huge success of Ne Zha movie and Black Myth Wukong game. Those industries suddenly went from being publicly vitified to being hailed as symbols of China's great rejuvenation. Most importantly, the internal circulation policy. In 2020, Xi proposed the dual circulation idea with domestic circulation as the main body, abandon overseas market, produce for ourselves, manufacture for ourselves, consume for ourselves. But the actual result? After the pandemic, China's trade surplus actually grew rapidly. China has never relied so heavily on imports and exports. Looking back, none of Xi's major economic policies from the second stage survived. In foreign policy, Xi also began showing his teeth. The Hu Jintao-era hide-and-abide approach no longer applied. Starting in his second term, Xi was no longer satisfied with just controlling China domestically. He began expanding the party's influence worldwide. He cracked down hard on Hong Kong, leading to the 2019 anti-extradition protest. He started the first round of the US-China trade war. Massive aid and loans to Africa and Latin America reached their peak. Domestically, Xi stopped pretending. The approachable image he faked in the first term completely vanished in the second term. Second, terms like Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh became forbidden. Xi became the Voldemort of new China. Say his name and you could be hunted down across thousands of miles. Speech controls tightened further. Many liberal-leaning big influencers got banned or simply disappeared. Really, starting in the second term, the real Xi Jinping was finally on full display. Of course, economic growth also began sliding sharply in this stage. In Xi's first term, average GDP growth was still 7%. In the second term, it dropped to 5.3%. Even though Xi's power was already quite strong by then, there were still a few people who could push back a little, like Li Keqiang. Li Keqiang once said there were still 600 million Chinese with monthly incomes below 1,000 yuan. That was basically calling out Xi, because Xi had boasted that he had solved China's poverty problem. The leash on Xi was shorter, but not yet completely cut. But soon, China entered Xi's third stage, the stage of total unrestricted. In his third term, Xi's control over power expanded even further. You could say it reached its peak. At the 20th Party Congress in 2022, all seven Politburo Standing Committee members became Xi's close allies. Premier Li Qiang became completely his subordinate. Li Keqiang, who in the second stage occasionally contradicted Xi, left the political core and later died unexpectedly from a heart issue. No one in the party could stop Xi anymore. With no checks left, Xi began pushing his agenda even harder. Warfare, diplomacy abroad, tighter controls at home, heavy economic intervention. In foreign policy, he became far more aggressive. After controlling Hong Kong, he turned to Taiwan. Military aircraft incursions around Taiwan surged starting in 2022. Facing the second round of the U.S.-China trade war, China began hitting Europe, the United States, Japan, and others hard. Diplomacy had nothing left in common with hide-and-abide. Domestic speech controls tightened still further. In the second stage, you couldn't openly curse the party or mock Xi Jinping. In the third stage, even sarcastic, veiled criticism became unacceptable. Even creators like Hu Chengfeng, who only talked about people's livelihood, could no longer be tolerated. Purely economic commentators like Gao Shanwen got banned just for questioning GDP figures rationally. Chinese public discourse entered a full chilling effect era. People can only chat about daily life and peaceful times. Many big influencers now come out to praise proactively. If they don't praise hard enough, they get labeled disloyal, like Hu Xijin. Most crucially, Xi's win-based economic intervention became even more unrestrained. The failures of his second-stage economic policies didn't make him reflect or realize he wasn't suited to governing. Instead, they made him double down. He began intervening even more forcefully in the market, starting this time with a nationwide push for innovation. In the third stage, Xi first proposed new quality productive forces. Tens of thousands of government funds poured into photovoltaic, electric vehicles, and other new quality sectors. This directly caused massive overcapacity in those industries. On economic development, ignoring all economists' warnings, Xi pushed hard for exports. Cheap dumping became the pillar of China's economy. China was forced into a high-volume, low-price model, which directly triggered a deflation crisis. Looking at these 13 years under Xi, he really is a Mao-like figure, a genius at internal struggle but a disaster at governing. For the Chinese people, that's a catastrophe. He is a genius at internal struggle because in just five years, he used anti-corruption and power grabs from the state council to swiftly achieve one center of authority. The speed and difficulty of his power consolidation were even greater than Mao's. Mao at least had the funding of the country as his credential. Xi had nothing like that, yet he did it in five years. That's genuinely impressive. But calling him incompetent at governing is fair because his level of statecraft is shockingly low. How low? Just count. In 13 years of economic policies, is there even one that didn't fail? The only one that hasn't completely failed yet is the one so recently proposed it hasn't had time to fail like New Quality Productive Forces, which he announced in September 2023. It's only half failed so far because it's still too new. Xi's economic policies are either already dead or on their way to dying. And when we look at economic performance across his three stages, one pattern stands out clearly. The more power Xi gained, the slower China's growth became, especially the big jump from stage 1 to stage 2. From stage 1 to stage 2, Xi's power made a huge leap from an ordinary chairman in collective leadership to a one-man show. And as his power surged, economic growth plunged. That's actually inevitable. With Xi's level of governing ability, the more power he holds, the worse the economy will perform. In the first stage, China could still maintain fairly strong growth, not because Xi's economic policies were normal then, but because he was spending most of his energy on power struggle and infighting with other party officials. He had no time to meddle in the economy or torment ordinary Chinese people. Once he freed up time and energy to focus on economic and domestic affairs, China's harder times began. Why is it so tragic for ordinary Chinese when someone like this comes to power? Think about it. For regular people, what matters most? What affects us most? It's whether the does well or poorly. In a normal country, the most important measure of a leader is economic governance ability. A leader this bad at managing the economy would have been forced out long ago. But China is not a normal country, it's an authoritarian one. Whether Xi stays or goes doesn't depend on his governing ability, it depends on his infighting ability. And Xi is stuck in exactly this awkward spot. If he were both a genius at infighting and a genius at governing, fine, people might say, OK, you took power for life, whatever. As long as the economy grows, it doesn't matter who sits in the chair. If he were incompetent at both infighting and governing, he'd probably have been removed long ago, like Hua Guofeng. People would suffer maybe 10 years at most, or even less than 5. Or if he were like Hu Jintao, great at governing but mediocre at infighting, that would still be acceptable. Everyone could enjoy rapid development. But Xi is precisely the combination of infighting genius and governing mediocrity. On one hand, his governing incompetence leads him to roll out wave after wave of policies that defy common sense and torment the Chinese people. On the other hand, his infighting genius means that even though GDP growth under him has hit an unprecedented low, he remains completely unshaken. He holds the throne firmly. No one can touch him. A leader like this is, under the entire authoritarian system, the single most harmful general secretary possible for ordinary Chinese people. This year is 2026. In China's system, the general secretary changes every 5 years. Next year, 2027, China will select a new state chairman, a new general secretary. And who will that be? I think everyone would say in unison, Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping is about to begin his fourth term. And as long as Xi remains in power, we will continue to be tormented by his governing style of making policy on women. For all Chinese people, encountering Xi Jinping really is our collective misfortune. Thank you so much for watching. If you find this video helpful, please like it, drop a comment below, and hit the subscribe button right here. It really helps YouTube suggest my videos to others. I'll be back with more content soon. Until then, be well.