What Xi Jinping's Personality Means for Taiwan's Deterrence

Taiwan’s security depends on a robust deterrence, tailored to the threat of a Chinese attack decided in the specific decision-making circumstances in Beijing. This depends to a large extent on the personality and objectives of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, particularly as he is most likely to be leader at the moment of the Chinese power transition supplanting the United States. Deducing foreign policy from personality profiles has a dubious record, especially because leaders are sufficiently rational to dominate a political system by adapting to it. However, in cases of highly centralized totalitarian systems, particularly in instances where individuals rule with small cabinets, decision-making may become dangerously optimistic regarding the use of force.

Xi, based on his upbringing and experience as a young adult, can be characterized as politically insecure and an admirer of Mao’s ruthlessness, but there is no evidence that he finds war intrinsically glorious, or that he is an exceptional risk taker. To the extent that Xi would consider a war against Taiwan, it would be to instrumentally cement his hold on power, rather than subscribing to an historically romanticized legacy, like Russian President Vladimir Putin. The implication is that sufficient force and a well communicated threat by Taiwan and its allies will deter an invasion.

Xi’s privileged early youth as a member of the Princeling faction made the benefits of CCP’s nepotism unequivocally obvious. However, in 1967, during the Cultural Revolution, Xi’s father – Xi Zhong Xun 習仲勳 (later known as one of the Eight Elder’s during Deng’s tenure), was politically demoted, and then confined from 1968 to 1978. Shockingly, Xi’s mother participated in the condemnation of both her husband and son. At the age of 13, without a father figure and son of an enemy of the social class, Xi suffered harassment and isolation during his high school years, and was subjected to special indoctrination. In Beijing, between August and September 1966, nearly 1800 people died of persecution, including Xi’s sister, who hanged herself in a washroom. In 1968, at the age of 15, as part of his re-education, Xi was “volunteered” for the Down to the Countryside Movement 上山下鄉運動. Unable to endure the harsh treatment, he escaped to Beijing, was arrested for four months, and humiliatingly returned to his assigned village. By the age of 20, Xi had attempted to join the Communist Youth League中共青年團 eight times but was repeatedly rejected due to his father’s disgrace.

Xi’s formative childhood experience inculcated both an awareness of elite entitlement, victimhood, self-reliance, and compromised emotional security associated with the absence of a father figure. Xi’s ironic adulation of Mao Zedong and his authoritarianism began at this time, likely addressing his aspiration for status, the security of a father figure, and most of all, as an emulatable path to power. Xi inherited none of his father’s reformist and patriotic ideology, nor did Xi assimilate his father’s post-mortem anthology critical of communist injustice and violence.

Xi was rehabilitated into the CCP as a result of the post-Cultural Revolution redress movement, and his restored status gave automatic admission into China’s elite Tsinghua University 清華大學. Xi is an ambitious bureaucrat rather than an intellectual, and is only definitively known to have read Nikolai Ostrovsky’s communist inspirational book How the Steel Was Tempered. Xi was granted an abbreviated and proforma degree. However, Xi never demonstrated a sophisticated historical patriotism, beyond a commiserated regret with Vladimir Putin of the collapse of the USSR. In fact, Xi’s status insecurity and anti-intellectual education is evident in his occasional public boasting, which carries more appeal with his domestic than international audiences. In France, 2014, Xi remarked unconvincingly that he had read and vividly remembered the works of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Henri de Saint-Simon, Fourier, Sartre, and two dozen more thinkers.

While Xi most often promotes himself as a man of the people, with whom he is generally very popular, he also portrays himself as a visionary leader. “Xi Jinping Thought” 習近平新時代中國特色社會主義思想, is a banal text mixed with ideas that are not authored by him, but elevated and appended into the CCP Constitution, and included as a mandatory text in elementary and higher education curricula.. Xi’s pursuit of status may be a personality craving, but also instrumental as Chinese publics expect their leaders to fit the stereotype of wise rulers 明君.

Xi’s early political assignments were the result of his communist aristocratic status, but subsequent promotions in the 1980s and 1990s were the result of his administrative competence and party reliability. As Provincial Premier from 2002 to 2006, Xi benefitted from the high growth of Zhejiang, driven by market demand in Shanghai, and this good fortune propelled him into higher national leadership. Lacking an independent powerbase, Xi’s key promotion was as a compromise candidate between the Jiang and Hu factions in 2007, with his ascension as leader in 2012.

However, Xi Jinping’s relative lack of political achievement rendered him politically vulnerable, and he resorted almost immediately to a widespread purge to install loyalists, under the guise of “Ideological Re-Alignment.” Between 2012 to 2017, Xi replaced an unprecedented 18 Central Committee members and 17 alternative members, equalling the same number removed in the 63 years between 1949 to 2012. Xi bypassed the CCP Central Commission for the Discipline and Inspection to personally direct the judicial actions taken against all deputy minister level officials. Xi’s purges after 2012 netted 9,942 individuals with fixed prison terms, 67 jailed for life, and 51 executions. At stake was control of the 95 million members of the CCP. China’s Ministry of State Security, his main instrument of surveillance, has an annual budget of US$111 billion, which is greater than China’s entire yearly naval and air force procurement outlay. Xi’s anti-corruption policies were similar to the practices of the radical left wing 左派of the CCP already underway at a much lower level of intensity, which was in turn mimicking Mao’s practice of perennial purges, known as the Three Counters, Five Counters – 三反 五反.

Xi’s upbringing drives an overriding concern for political security achieved through intensifying authoritarianism, as compared with his three predecessors. On his ascension to power during the 18^th National Congress in 2012, Xi reduced the number of Politburo Standing Committee seats from nine down to a critical seven. The narrower Politburo is meant to exclude other political factions, marginalizing in particular the Shanghai Gang of Jiang Zemin, which is his main opponent, as well as to make control by Xi easier. However, neglecting the Chinese practice of consensus politics, and embracing the totalitarian tradition of excluding political opposition, generates hostility and further feeds Xi’s insecurity.

Isolated political factions prioritize group conformity, leading to self-censorship and sycophancy, a dysfunction that distorts decision-making called groupthink. Small cabinets also reduce the availability of information, worsen policy quality, increase inter-state crisis escalation by 12 percent, as well as unintended wars. Democracies, with large cabinets, win wars 81 percent of the time, whereas non-democracies win about half the time, precisely because of their inability to fashion reliable alliances due to the sidelining of foreign affairs in lieu of military violence. This tends to lead authoritarian states fighting alone, outnumbered (termed Self-encirclement), leading to defeat. Winston Churchill’s wartime inner cabinet, by comparison, rose from five to eight ministers, plus military representatives, comprising Conservative, Labour, and Liberal party members.

The lack of Politburo Foreign Ministry representation risks causing China to neglect diplomacy, and making it more likely for Xi alone to decide whether to embark on a war. Historically, Xi has been poorly advised by his Politburo and committees to harass Taiwan during elections, which has consistently backfired. According to a leaked intelligence report from the Russian FSB, Xi may see an attack on Taiwan as an achievement sufficient to cement his rule for life, building on the 2021 CCP declaration that indefinitely extended his period of rule.

The implication for Taiwan is that Xi is deterrable, and is unlikely to make the desperate gamble of an amphibious invasion without a modicum of superiority. Xi’s designs for war will be entirely driven by the instrumental political benefit to him of consolidating his power over the CCP. However, his Maoist inspired ruthlessness means he has no compunction for crossing the frightening threshold to war if he perceives it to be to his advantage. Furthermore, Xi is likely comforted by his awareness that authoritarian leaders protected by a robust internal security police, that are then defeated in wars, are only ejected from office fifty percent of the time, compared with ninety percent for democratic leaders. However, any calculus by Xi is likely to be distorted by a significant element of miscalculation given to him by his poorly informed cabinet and sycophantic advisors.