Xi Jinping endured an astonishingly grim childhood, says The Economist. His father, Xi Zhongxun, insisted on total deference from his children. Every lunar new year, Xi would perform the traditional “kowtow ritual”, prostrating himself at his old man’s feet. “If his technique was off, his father would beat him.” Xi Zhongxun was a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party until he was purged in 1962 for supporting the publication of a subversive novel. Four years later, as part of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, he was kidnapped and tortured. Xi – still only around 13 years old – was branded a “capitalist roader” (a traitor) because of his father’s disgrace. One of his sisters killed herself. Xi was forced to wear a heavy steel cap and subjected to a ritual humiliation at the hands of a baying crowd. “His mother joined in the jeering.”

Xi was soon thrown in prison, where he had to sleep on an icy floor during winter. “My entire body was covered in lice,” he wrote. At one point he managed to escape and make his way home, where he begged his mother for some food. “Not only did she refuse, she also reported him to the authorities.” When he was 15, Xi was sent to the countryside along with millions of other young people exiled from the cities. He lived in a cave in a remote part of the country, “where girls were sold into marriage for a dowry calculated by their weight”. Xi, who spent seven years there before eventually securing a place at university, found it a formative experience. “Even if you do not understand, you are forced to understand,” he said later. “It forces you to mature earlier.”

🍖🤢 Xi’s deference to his father remained even when he was in his mid-30s and a rising star in the CCP. During one family meal, Xi Zhongxun – by now in his 70s – was struggling to chew through some garlic ribs, so he took the “half-masticated” meat out of his mouth and gave it to his son to finish. Xi “accepted the morsel without hesitation or complaint”.

The Party’s Interests Come First by Joseph Torigian is available to buy here.

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Don’t be like Magnus

The rest of today’s heroes and villains – including a stroppy Magnus Carlsen, the ultramarathon champion who breastfed en route, and why Ryanair’s boss fully deserves his €100m payday – is for paying subscribers only.

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