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February 12th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Mr Xi, 58, is being unveiled to America this week on a week-long tour across
the US. He will meet Barack Obama for the first time in a White House stop,
then visit the Pentagon and State department and address business leaders,
before a nostalgic return to an Iowan farm community where he spent time in
1985 and will, if schedules are confirmed, round off the trip at a Los
Angeles Lakers basketball game.
The high-profile trip will not only introduce him to the US at a time of
strained relations between the two superpowers over issues ranging from
Syria to trade.
It is also intended to strengthen his profile back in China, where he is for
now still eclipsed not just by his wife but also his late father.
Mr Xi is the son of Xi Zhongsun, a guerrilla hero of the communist revolution
who rose to be vice-premier, but was then purged during the Cultural
Revolution by Mao Zedong, sent to work in a factory and later jailed.
The younger Xi, who had grown up as communist “princeling” in a
privileged compound in Beijing, was dispatched as a 16-year-old to work in
the countryside.
Yet that experience did nothing to dampen his commitment to the party – a
telling insight into the man with whom the world will be dealing. Instead,
he joined the communist youth league, then worked his way up through the
party ranks.
Asked later about his experience of the Cultural Revolution on state
television, he showed little bitterness for the party-inspired turmoil that
for a while tore his family apart. “It was emotional,” he said. “It
was a mood. And when the ideals of the Cultural Revolution could not be
realised, it proved an illusion.”
He assiduously worked his way up the party structure to run two economic
powerhouse provinces before overseeing the widely-acclaimed 2008 Beijing
Olympics.
It is in many ways the classic career trajectory of a party mandarin. But he
is also a fan of Hollywood war films, has a daughter who is studying under
an assumed name at Harvard and married a second glamorous wife (his first
spouse was the daughter of an ambassador to London).
Reporting on the lives of top party leaders is still largely taboo in the
Chinese media, but the coverage that is delivered portrays him as an affable
and down-to-earth figure who eschews the extravagant lifestyles and is free
of the allegations of corruption that swirl around some fellow “princelings”.
His marriage to Miss Peng – who will not be with him in the US on this week’s
visit – is also viewed as a major plus as he rose through the ranks.
“Her popularity in the military may have helped Xi’s selection as China’s
next leader, and may continue to help Xi as he seeks to consolidate power in
the years ahead,” noted Susan Lawrence, Asian Affairs specialist at the
Congressional Research, in a briefing document sent to all members of
Congress last week.
Michael Green, who oversaw Asian affairs in the White House of President
George W Bush, said that the trip would be all about developing a
relationship with a man who the administration did not know well but with
whom the US would probably be dealing for 10 years.
“There are still things about him that we may find out on this trip,”
said Mr Green. “One of the questions is his relationship with the
People’s Liberation Army (PLA). His father was a general, his wife is a
famous singing major general, she sings patriotic songs. It sounds like
Gilbert and Sullivan – The Pirates of Penzance. She is the very
model of a modern major general.
“But she is a very popular singer. There is still a debate among the
experts about whether he will shape the PLA, or will the PLA shape him.”
As officials prepare for his arrival on Monday, the stakes for one of the most
important and sensitive relationships on the international stage could not
be higher in both China and the US.
Mr Xi Is certainly a very different figure to the man he will succeed,
President Hu Jintao, a characterless awkward figure with whom George W Bush
and Mr Obama struggled to develop a rapport.
Beijing hopes that the trip will help bolster his stature at home and smooth
strained relations with Washington.
Cui Tianka, the vice foreign minister who oversees US affairs, noted the two
countries suffer from a “trust deficit” that the trip might help
resolve.
“The level of mutual trust between China and the US is lagging behind
what is required for further development of our bilateral relations,”
he said last week.
There is certainly a long list over which the two are at loggerheads –
including the US military “pivot” towards Asia as China has pursed
maritime territorial disputes with neighbours, Iran’s nuclear programme,
North Korea, Taiwan, Tibet, human rights and cyber-security breaches.
Long-standing American complaints that Beijing is under-valuing its currency
and subsidising state industries to undercut US business trade have produced
scathing condemnation of China on the Republican presidential campaign
trail. Mr Obama also weighed in with heavy criticism of China’s economic
model during last month’s State of the Union address.
Mr Xi will need to rebut those attacks to show his domestic audience that he
is not a push-over.
And in a country where first ladies have had almost no public profile since
the domineering days of Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing, Miss Peng is likely
to prove a crucial partner in her husband’s ascent.
Additional reporting by William Lowther in Washington
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