How Xi Jinping Thinks

Xi Jinping’s China is not a normal country.

Xi has been transforming China from a normal modern country back into a Bronze Age theocracy.

Though he has been boasting of this reformation for years, our best and brightest in foreign affairs, politics, and business have been too clueless to grasp the scope of his agenda. Xi speaks of “Chinese Characteristics” as the warp and woof of his nation-building project. If we open our eyes and suspend our Western rationalism for just long enough to investigate Xi’s “Chinese Characteristics” from his point of view, we can almost read his mind and predict his decisions.

You see, Xi’s “Chinese Characteristics” is not merely a slogan. It signifies something grand and transcendent—a theological mythology propounded by the Shang and early Zhou Dynasties (1,700 – 500 BCE), long before the Chinese people had made themselves into a great empire. I’ll summarize the ancient myth as such: it characterizes a sentient and purposeful Heaven above and around us; our world as the All-Under-Heaven, planned and directed in everything by Heaven; and Heaven acting in our world through its loyal servant, the Son of Heaven.

Roughly speaking, Xi proposes that Heaven has chosen him to be the Son of Heaven in our time. Xi believes he has been given authority to guide the All-Under-Heaven according to his instructions. And, China’s destiny today is to bring our world into conformity with Heaven’s plans and aspirations.

By my reading, Xi’s China is therefore a theocracy. Only a leap of faith permits belief in the truth of Shang and Zhou Dynasty myths. No doubt, there is a deep irrationality hidden behind the words of so-called “Xi Jinping Thought” as secular catechism, along with his promotion of certain “Chinese Characteristics.”  

To extend the analogy a bit further: Xi is the Pope; the Politburo is the Curia; the Central Committee is the College of Cardinals; and Communist Party cadres are the priests tasked to shepherd the believers and provide them with truth, sustenance, and salvation.

In Xi’s China, rival faiths cannot be tolerated. There is only one true faith: his. To paraphrase John 14:6, Xi is “the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father [Heaven] except through [him].” Xi’s state must control and sideline all rival theologies – Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Fa Lun Gong, Western Enlightenment rationality, etc.

Fortunately for those of us raised and educated exclusively within the myth structure of the West, a handbook for management of such a theocracy was written by a competent political activist named Mozi (470 -391 BCE).

Mozi rejected the humanism of Confucius on the grounds that Heaven had created a human race of selfish and untrustworthy creatures. Mozi had no confidence that any normal human person could be moral and upright, wise and responsible. So, he announced that humans needed a state to keep us in order, that this was Heaven’s chosen way for us to live. According to Mozi, we must give up our egos and live according to the Will of Heaven as devoted acolytes of a grand master planner. And, wrote Mozi, we are fortunate that Heaven demonstrated compassion by giving us a Son of Heaven to rule and keep all of us in order. Our duty? To faithfully follow his instructions.

Mozi wrote: “The will of Heaven is like the compass to the wheelwright and the square to the carpenter. The wheelwright tests the circularity of every object in the world with his compasses saying ‘That which satisfies my compasses is circular; that which does not is not circular.’”

If you look closely, you can see Mozi’s teachings in Xi’s thought and action. Take, for example, Xi’s social credit system, which uses various data inputs to effectively bestow upon each Chinese person a “social credit score” to rate his or her behavior. Charmingly, what Xi is doing through this system (keeping people on the straight and narrow as the government defines the straight and narrow), Mozi endeavored to accomplish through what he called “ghosts.” Again, this may sound absurd to the Western reader, but bear with me. Mozi believed that “ghosts” rewarded virtue and punished vice. If Chinese people really and truly believed in ghosts, then the people would naturally avoid vice and behave virtuously, leading in turn to a peaceful and prosperous society. Mozi blamed the social and political chaos of his time on the ignorance of Chinese regarding ghosts. If people were better informed, Mozi said, then “it would really be a source of orderliness in the country and blessing to the people.”

And so, to protect our values and engage productively with Xi’s China, we need to study ancient Chinese writers. All of them can be read in excellent English translations. I recommend starting with the Classics of History and Poetry, followed by Mozi and the Legalist thinkers – Shang Yang, Guanzi, and Han Feizi. If you make it through those volumes, then study the writers who devised the organizational and belief formulas for the imperial system: Xunxi and the Annals of Lu Buwei. The spiritual roots of Xi Jinping’s vision are much deeper and broader than we realize. This study will help lay the groundwork for us to deal seriously with Xi’s theocracy.

Stephen B. Young is the Global Executive Director of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism (CRT). Young was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He served as an Assistant Dean at the Harvard Law School and as the third Dean of the Hamline University School of Law. His new book is Kissinger's Betrayal: How America Lost the Vietnam War.