Beijing - Two years into his presidency China's Xi Jinping has overturned his image as a consensus-builder, with some analysts questioning whether the Communist Party would have chosen him as leader if the full scope of his ambitions and his signature anti-corruption drive had been known.
Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party, was widely viewed as a compromise candidate between rival factions when he took office two years ago Saturday, winning approval from both influential former president Jiang Zemin and Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao.
At the helm of a party whose prime goal is ensuring its own continued rule, Xi was expected to continue the leadership's risk-averse approach -- but instead, experts say he has confounded expectations by presiding over a far-reaching anti-graft campaign and a harsh crackdown on activists, sending shockwaves through the ranks of the party elite and civil society alike.
"If anybody had had any inkling of what was going to happen, he would not have been picked," said Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College who has written two books on contemporary Chinese politics.
After the death in 1976 of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong -- who was at the centre of a huge personality cult -- the party became deeply conservative politically, Pei said, with its innermost circle selecting top leaders who would respect a new set of norms.
There was to be a consensus-based decision-making process, a respect for the physical safety of other party members and -- crucially -- no strong leaders.
"Both Jiang and Hu were in that mould," Pei said, noting that other than Xi, the six remaining members of the party's elite Politburo Standing Committee "are people who will not rock the boat".
But Pei added: "In the case of Xi, they've got the mother of all boat-rockers. The people who picked him must be regretting bitterly that they picked somebody who turned out to be completely different."
AFP
