Back to the Future? Xi Jinping as an Anti-bureaucratic Crusader

This article places Xi Jinping’s accumulation of personal power and top-down crusade against bureaucratic corruption in broader historical perspective. His moves are a response to China’s distinctive political and economic trajectory in the era of reform, one that for the first time makes possible the accumulation of property and wealth by the families of officials. Although Xi’s approach is often seen as a throwback to practices of the Mao era, it in fact revives the bureaucratic legacy of Liu Shaoqi, not the anti-elitist radicalism of Mao Zedong. China’s problem of bureaucratic corruption has little precedent in the history of the Communist Party of China, or of the Soviet Union in the past, but bears eerie parallels with the problems that beset the Guomindang during its years on the Mainland.