The XI Jinping Effect

Assesses the broad impact of China’s influential leader

The Xi Jinping Effect explores the relationship between the People’s Republic of China’s current ＂paramount leader＂--arguably the most powerful figure since Mao Zedong (1893-1976)--and multiple areas of political and social transformation. It illuminates not just policy arenas in which his leadership of China has had an outsized impact but also areas where his initiatives have faltered due to unintended consequences, international pushback, or the divergence of local priorities from those of the central government. Collectively, the book’s chapters document the ways in which Xi’s neo-totalitarianism has dismantled Reform Era legacies, while reconfiguring governance and rewiring China’s global connections. Contributions by anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and political scientists consider such issues as Xi’s anticorruption campaign and obsession with ideological governance, state surveillance, the status of ethnic minorities and migrants, income inequality, and China’s relations with Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295752822

Ashley Esarey is associate professor of political science at the University of Alberta. He is coauthor, with Hsiu-lien Lu, of My Fight for a New Taiwan: One Woman’s Journey from Prison to Power and coeditor of Taiwan in Dynamic Transition: Nation Building and Democratization and Greening East Asia: The Rise of the Eco-Developmental State. Rongbin Han is associate professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia. He is author of Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience and coauthor of Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies: How China Wins Online.