On XI Jinping: How XI’s Marxist Nationalism Is Shaping China and the World

An authoritative account of Xi Jinping’s worldview and how it drives Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage.

In his new book, On Xi Jinping, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provides an authoritative account of the ideological worldview driving Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage--that of President Xi Jinping, who now hold near-total control over the Chinese Communist Party and is now, in effect, president-for-life. Rudd argues that Xi’s worldview differs significantly from those of the leaders who preceded him, and that this ideological shift is reflected in the real world of Chinese policy and behaviour.

Focusing on China’s domestic politics, political economy, and foreign policy, Rudd characterises Xi Jinping’s ideological framing of the world as ＂Marxist-Leninist nationalism.＂ According to Rudd, Xi’s notion of Leninism has taken the party and Chinese politics further to the left in comparison to his predecessors. Also, his Marxism has also taken Chinese economic thinking to the left-in a more decisively more statist direction and away from the historical dynamism of the private sector. However, Chinese nationalism under Xi has moved further to the right- towards a much, harder-edged, foreign policy vision of China and a new determination to change the international status quo. Xi’s worldview is an integrated one, where his national ideological vision for China’s future is ultimately inseparable from his view on China’s position in the region and the world. These changes in worldview are also reflected in Xi’s broader rehabilitation of the concept of ＂struggle＂ as a legitimate concept for the conduct of both Chinese domestic and foreign policy--a struggle that need not necessarily always be peaceful.

Finally, Xi’s ideological worldview also exhibits a new level of nationalist self-confidence about China’s future--derived from China’s historical and civilizational strengths but reinforced by his Marxist-Leninist concept of historical determinism and the belief that the tides of history are now on firmly China’s side. A powerful analysis of the worldview of arguably the most consequential world leader of our era, this will be essential reading for anyone interested in how Xi is transforming both China and the international order, and, most importantly, why?

Kevin Rudd is former Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister of Australia. He is also former President of the Asia Society and the current Australian Ambassador to the United States. He has a PhD in politics from Oxford University and is the author of The Avoidable War (2022), among other books.