Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2024. US$35.00, paper. ISBN 9780295752815.
This volume explores the so-called Xi Jinping Effect on China’s domestic governance and foreign policy since he assumed office as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012. Structured into four parts: 1) “Taking Charge and Building Faith,” 2) “Socioeconomic Policies Targeting Poverty, 3) Surveillance and Political Control, and 4) Taiwan and Foreign Policy,” the book consists of 10 chapters that evaluate Xi’s leadership across multiple dimensions. Bringing together leading scholars in each field, the volume offers a comprehensive and stimulating assessment of Xi Jinping’s influence. The contributors should be commended for producing a timely and thought-provoking volume that enriches our understanding of Xi’s political impact.
Given the scope of this ambitious volume, I would like to raise three points that merit further consideration. First, while the selected topics are undoubtedly central to Xi’s governance—such as the anti-corruption campaign, ideological tightening, surveillance expansion, Sinicization of religion, common prosperity, Taiwan unification efforts, and regional diplomacy—the volume devotes limited attention to other equally critical areas. These include party-military relations, party-state dynamics, centre-local interactions, business-state relations, and China’s engagement with the United States and international institutions. A broader thematic range might have provided a more holistic understanding of Xi’s effect on the Chinese political system.
Second, the chapters tend to overstate the extent of Xi Jinping’s personal power. While it is true that power and authority have become increasingly centralized in his hands, making him a stronger leader than his predecessors, the exercise of that power is constrained. As Wedeman notes, Xi was initially “a product of the Jiang-Hu period”—an unremarkable figure who rose through extensive propaganda, institutional restructuring, and legal reform. His emergence reflects not only personal ambition but also a broader consensus within the CCP for the need of a strong leader to address internal and external pressures. Cheek similarly emphasizes that concerns about corruption and commercialism threatening the one-party system were widely shared among Party elites, fostering support for a figure capable of dismantling entrenched networks of privilege.
It is crucial to recognize that significant power does not grant Xi unchecked autonomy. The absence of electoral legitimacy in China’s one-party system means that even top leaders are constrained by institutional and ideological legacies. As such, even general secretaries cannot unilaterally overturn established policies and must instead adjust them incrementally while maintaining rhetorical continuity with past leadership. The evolution of “Dengism,” as discussed in the volume, reflects this pattern across the Jiang, Hu, and Xi administrations. These adjustments require careful intra-party consensus-building and legal revisions. In this respect, Xi’s freedom to innovate is considerably more limited than that of a democratically elected president, such as the one in the United States.
Policy implementation is also shaped by the sheer scale of China’s governing apparatus, extending from the centre to the provinces, prefectures, counties, and townships. Local interests often distort or transform central policies. The overenforcement of the Zero-COVID policy and delayed responses to the local debt crisis illustrate how such deviations are part of China’s governance landscape. Xi’s efforts to strengthen central authority—via anti-corruption drives, rectification campaigns, personalist leadership, rule-by-law promotion, and bureaucratic restructuring—can inhibit bureaucratic initiative and intensify internal friction. Balancing local autonomy with effective macro-level control remains a perennial challenge. This structural tension contributes to the oscillation between phases of “release” and “retrenchment” in Chinese governance, often resulting in policy swings. Xi, too, is subject to these systemic constraints. As O’Brien insightfully argues, Xi is both an agent and a product of structural conditions.
Third, while the volume’s chapters address continuity and change under Xi, they do not always clearly distinguish between short-term and long-term transformations, or between changes driven directly by Xi and those arising from broader, structural forces. For instance, although grid management personnel involved in surveillance may operate in response to immediate conditions, the data collection systems they support—once implemented and embedded—are unlikely to be dismantled even if leadership changes. Similarly, in the realm of Taiwan policy and foreign affairs, many of the determining factors lie outside Xi’s direct control. His administration must respond flexibly to fluid geopolitical conditions and adapt strategies to maximize national interest in real time. While Taiwan’s unification remains a non-negotiable long-term objective, “Wolf Warrior diplomacy” is best understood as a tactical tool—employed selectively and subject to adjustment depending on context. Thus, a more careful typology of change is necessary when assessing Xi Jinping’s effect—one that distinguishes between durable structural shifts and contingent developments, as well as between changes initiated by leadership and those shaped by systemic conditions.
On the book’s pale blue cover, Xi Jinping is depicted on a small scale, yet his shadow stretches strikingly long. In literature, film, and television, a “long shadow” often symbolizes a traumatic or burdensome legacy. In this case, too, it is not merely Xi’s agency, but the structural context in which he is embedded, that determines the length of that shadow.
Kazuko Kojima
Keio University, Tokyo