Uncovering China's Secrets: Why Xi Jinping Behaves Like This

China scholar Orville Schell reveals how Xi Jinping's Cultural Revolution childhood created a leader trapped by darkness, tradition, and Leninist ideology - threatening China's greatest achievements.

Key Takeaways

• Xi Jinping's formative years during the Cultural Revolution shaped him into a creature of survival rather than reform, lacking exposure to broader worldviews
• China remains trapped between two dark forces: ancient autocratic traditions and modern Leninist organizational methods
• The tragedy of modern China is that Xi threatens to undermine the country's greatest achievement - becoming a modern, wealthy, powerful nation
• Unlike previous leaders who traveled abroad, Xi grew up entirely within China's hostile revolutionary environment, learning manipulation and control as survival tools
• China's current autarkic turn mirrors classical Chinese patterns of rejecting foreign influence when feeling threatened or insecure
• The research environment for understanding China has fundamentally changed, requiring scholars to return to Cold War-era methods of distant observation
• Xi's victim culture psychology, rooted in grievance and humiliation narratives, drives irrational policy decisions that harm China's national interests
• Strategic ambiguity on Taiwan remains necessary because Xi's psychological makeup makes him prone to overreaction to perceived slights
• The forces of openness and reform in China haven't disappeared but remain dormant, waiting for the right moment to resurface
• America's decades-long commitment to engagement was genuine and bipartisan, making China's current hostility particularly tragic

The Darkness Lu Xun Saw: Understanding China's Eternal Struggle

There's something haunting about returning to Lu Xun's writings when trying to understand modern China. The great writer, who reached his peak a century ago, was obsessed with darkness because he saw it everywhere around him. He wasn't sure how China could ever escape it, and unlike many of his contemporaries, he never drank the Kool-Aid of Chinese communism.

Lu Xun captured something essential in his essay "The Power of Darkness": "Let the awakened man burden himself with the weight of tradition and shoulder up the gate of Darkness. Let him give unimpeded passage to the children so that they may rush to the bright wide open spaces and lead happy lives henceforth as rational human beings." His famous story "Diary of a Madman" ended with a desperate plea: "Save the children."

What makes Lu Xun so relevant today is his understanding of China's fundamental dilemma. The country has always been caught between the weight of tradition and the promise of modernity, between the forces of darkness and light. He recognized how deeply embedded these patterns were in China's DNA, and how difficult it would be for the country to escape them.

• Lu Xun saw tradition as both China's strength and its greatest burden
• His obsession with "saving the children" reflected hope that future generations could escape historical patterns
• The writer understood irony in ways that most Chinese intellectuals did not
• His work reveals the psychological foundations of China's ongoing struggles with modernity

This same darkness that Lu Xun identified persists today, manifesting in Xi Jinping's increasingly authoritarian rule and China's retreat from global engagement. The tragedy is that China has accomplished what it couldn't achieve for a century - becoming a modern, wealthy, powerful country - and now Xi threatens to undermine all of that with senseless confrontation.

The Toxic Cocktail: Tradition Meets Leninism

Understanding why things are so dark in China today requires grappling with what Orville Schell calls the "toxic cocktail" of traditional autocracy and Leninism. These two forces have created a powerful combination that even reform-minded leaders struggle to escape.

Traditional Chinese governance wasn't democratic in any modern sense. For 2,000 years, China had dynastic government that was fundamentally autocratic, even when tempered by Confucian ideals. The emperor's authority came not from divine right of kings but from the Mandate of Heaven - a cosmic force that conferred legitimacy. This created deep patterns of centralized, top-down control.

Then came Leninism, which was all about building a big, strong, one-party system. Early 20th-century Chinese intellectuals saw their country's weakness emanating from tradition - the Confucian system had "hog-tied" China and prevented it from modernizing. They attacked traditional culture, not realizing they were about to embrace something even more constraining.

Sun Yat-sen had called China "a dish of loose sand" - scattered, disunified, weak. Leninism promised to solve this through revolutionary organization and party discipline. But it also brought its own forms of darkness: paranoia, control, the elevation of ideology over human relationships.

• Traditional autocracy provided the foundation for centralized control
• Leninism added modern organizational methods and ideological rigidity
• The combination created patterns that even reformist leaders couldn't fully escape
• This "toxic cocktail" became embedded in China's political DNA

Even during the most open periods - under reform-minded General Secretaries - these two elements remained present, constraining what was possible. Xi Jinping represents a full embrace of both traditions, reverting to China's "most retrograde habits" precisely when the country should be moving forward.

Xi Jinping: A Creature of the Cultural Revolution

To understand Xi Jinping's psychology, you have to understand his formative experiences. Unlike previous Chinese leaders who traveled abroad and were exposed to different worldviews, Xi grew up entirely within China during its most turbulent period. This shaped him in profound ways that continue to influence his leadership today.

The contrast with earlier leaders is striking. Deng Xiaoping went to France and Russia. Jiang Zemin wanted desperately to be accepted in the outside world - reciting the Gettysburg Address, singing "O Sole Mio," speaking English with global leaders. These experiences provided what Schell calls "countervailing influences" that leavened their worldview.

Xi had no such exposure. His formative years were spent in China's northwest, in very backward areas, during the Cultural Revolution's chaos. He learned how to survive in a deeply hostile environment through manipulation, tight organization, and distrust of those around him. The toolkit he acquired was fundamentally about control and survival, not reform or opening.

This explains Xi's profound discomfort in international settings. He doesn't speak foreign languages, doesn't know how to operate in the globalized world outside China. Instead, he retreats to formalism, ritual, ceremony - the traditional tools of imperial majesty designed to create awe and distance rather than genuine connection.

• Xi's formative experience was surviving the Cultural Revolution's hostility
• He learned manipulation and control as essential survival tools
• Unlike previous leaders, he had no meaningful exposure to foreign influences
• His discomfort with international engagement reflects this limited worldview

When Xi meets with Obama, Biden, or Macron, the interactions are uncomfortable because he's operating from a completely different playbook. He wants to impress through displays of power rather than build genuine relationships. This isn't just about protocol - it reflects deep psychological patterns formed during his youth.

The Psychology of Victim Culture

One of the most important insights for understanding Xi Jinping is recognizing how deeply he's steeped in victim culture and grievance narratives. This isn't unique to him - it's something he shares with Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders who see the world through the lens of historical humiliation and foreign threat.

This mindset creates what Schell calls "a psychological syndrome" that makes rational assessment of national interest nearly impossible. Instead of making decisions based on objective analysis, leaders trapped in victim culture react emotionally to perceived slights and threats, often in ways that harm their own countries' interests.

For Xi, Taiwan represents the ultimate test of this psychology. Previous Chinese leaders took a more pragmatic approach - Mao told Nixon and Kissinger that if it took 100 years to solve the Taiwan question, no problem. Deng Xiaoping suggested leaving it to "smarter future generations." That was the proper approach: don't renounce the claim, but don't push it to a catastrophic confrontation.

But Xi cannot adopt this patient stance because his psychology won't allow it. Any sign of concession or compromise feels like weakness, and he's deeply sensitive to perceived disrespect. This creates a dangerous dynamic where he might "throw the switch" on Taiwan in ways that could be catastrophic, even if it goes against China's rational interests.

• Victim culture makes rational policy assessment nearly impossible
• Xi's sensitivity to perceived slights drives irrational decision-making
• The Taiwan issue becomes a test of psychological rather than strategic concerns
• Previous leaders' patience on Taiwan reflected healthier psychological frameworks

This is where Greek tragedy becomes relevant for understanding modern China. Like the heroes of Sophocles and Euripides, Xi is a capable leader with overweening ambition who's also thin-skinned and prone to going too far. The pattern in Greek tragedy is always the same: hubris leads to catastrophe, and leaders bring the whole world down around their shoulders.

The End of Engagement and the Research Blackout

We're witnessing the end of an era in US-China relations and China studies. The world where scholars, journalists, and businesspeople could move freely between the US and China is over, fundamentally changing how we understand and interact with the country.

This represents a return to earlier patterns. When Schell first started studying China, his passport said in bold letters: "Not good for travel to the People's Republic of China." He had to go to Taiwan instead, lying on beaches listening to transistor radios crackling with programs from the mainland. That world of distant observation is returning.

The recent decision by CNKI - China's equivalent of JSTOR - to cut off foreign access to academic papers symbolizes this shift. The type of research that foreigners could do in China over the past 40 years is ending. We're entering a period where China is becoming more autarkic, more isolated, and more paranoid about foreign presence.

This creates both challenges and opportunities. During the Cold War period, some of the best China analysis came from scholars who never set foot in the country. People like Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans) and Franz Schurmann produced penetrating insights by reading provincial newspapers and analyzing documents from afar.

• The era of easy academic and journalistic access to China has ended
• Scholars must return to Cold War-era methods of distant observation
• Some of the best China analysis historically came from outside observers
• The research blackout reflects China's broader retreat from global engagement

The challenge now is developing new methods for understanding China when direct access is limited. This requires cultivating relationships with the Chinese diaspora, working with people coming out of China, and developing the analytical skills to see through the cloud darkly - just as an earlier generation of scholars had to do.

The Secret Diplomacy After Tiananmen

One of the most revealing episodes in US-China relations occurred immediately after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, when President George H.W. Bush sent National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft on a secret mission to Beijing. The details of this meeting, recently revealed through declassified documents, show how desperately America wanted to preserve the relationship.

What's striking about the encounter is who was doing the begging. Instead of Deng Xiaoping pleading with America not to cut China off after the massacre, it was Scowcroft begging Deng not to abandon the "friendship" that President Bush felt with China. Deng spent the meeting criticizing the US, saying American "peaceful evolution" and democracy promotion had caused the Tiananmen protests.

This reveals something crucial about the engagement period: America went "the last measure of devotion" to keep the relationship operational. Nine presidential administrations from both parties supported engagement, making extraordinary efforts to work with China even after major setbacks. The commitment was genuine, bipartisan, and sustained over decades.

The tragedy is that it was ultimately China, not America, that destroyed engagement. Despite all the criticism of US policy toward China, the historical record shows remarkable American patience and commitment to working with Beijing. When Xi Jinping now claims that America has always been trying to contain China, it contradicts decades of evidence showing the opposite.

• Scowcroft's secret mission showed America's desperation to preserve ties after Tiananmen
• Nine US administrations supported engagement through multiple crises
• China, not America, ultimately ended the engagement period
• The historical record contradicts current Chinese narratives about US hostility

This history matters because it shows that engagement wasn't naive or one-sided - it was a genuine attempt to integrate China into the global system. Its failure reflects Chinese choices rather than American hostility or incompetence.

Strategic Ambiguity and the Taiwan Trap

The Taiwan question represents perhaps the most dangerous aspect of Xi Jinping's psychology-driven foreign policy. Unlike previous Chinese leaders who took a patient, long-term approach, Xi has made Taiwan central to his legacy in ways that could trap him into catastrophic decisions.

Strategic ambiguity - America's deliberate vagueness about exactly how it would respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan - has kept the peace for decades. Some argue it should be abandoned in favor of clear commitments, but Schell argues this would be dangerously provocative given Xi's psychological makeup.

Xi's sense of being disrespected and his thin-skinned response to perceived slights mean that abandoning strategic ambiguity would hit him "exactly at that point of his insecurity." He would feel compelled to respond, potentially triggering exactly the crisis that clear commitments are supposed to prevent.

The better approach is what Schell calls "arming the hell out of Taiwan" while maintaining ambiguity. Make Taiwan "indigestible" through defensive capabilities - the porcupine strategy - while avoiding provocative declarations that would force Xi into a corner where his psychology demands response.

• Strategic ambiguity has preserved peace for decades despite its logical contradictions
• Xi's psychology makes him prone to overreaction to perceived provocations
• Clear US commitments might trigger the crisis they're meant to prevent
• The porcupine strategy offers deterrence without unacceptable provocation

The challenge is that Xi, like Putin, may be incapable of cutting losses and backing down when faced with unwinnable situations. The question of "face" - deeply important in Chinese culture - makes it psychologically difficult for leaders to accept defeat even when it's in their national interest.

The Dormant Forces of Reform

Despite Xi Jinping's authoritarian consolidation, it's crucial to remember that what we see today isn't everything that exists in China. The forces of openness, reform, and engagement with the world haven't disappeared - they're dormant, waiting for the right moment to resurface.

Schell witnessed this pattern repeatedly during his decades of China watching. He was there for Democracy Wall in 1979, for the massive demonstrations of 1989 when a million people filled Tiananmen Square, and for recent episodes like the White Paper Revolution. These moments reveal "incipient forces" within Chinese society that contradict everything Xi Jinping represents.

China remains what Schell calls "a deeply unresolved political culture" that doesn't know which direction it really wants to go. It moves in one direction for a while, then swings back in another - not unlike other countries with competing political traditions. The current authoritarian phase doesn't represent some permanent victory of dark forces.

The May Fourth Movement of 1919 created a tradition of enlightenment thinking that emphasized democracy, science, and engagement with the world. Figures like Hu Shih, who studied at Columbia and became China's ambassador to Washington, represented a different path - one that valued experimentation with democratic forms rather than endless preparation for some distant future reform.

• Reform forces in China are dormant, not dead
• Historical patterns show repeated cycles of opening and closing
• The May Fourth tradition of enlightenment thinking persists beneath the surface
• What we see today represents one strand of Chinese tradition, not its totality

Even during Xi's rule, we've seen glimpses of these alternative traditions - in protests against COVID lockdowns, in ongoing resistance to government overreach, in the simple fact that millions of Chinese continue to seek education and opportunities abroad despite official discouragement.

The Research Challenge: Seeing Through Clouds Darkly

With China increasingly closed to foreign researchers, scholars face the challenge of understanding the country from a distance - returning to methods pioneered during the early Cold War when China was completely inaccessible to Western observers.

Some of the most penetrating analysis of China actually came from scholars who never set foot in the country. Franz Schurmann's "Ideology and Organization in Modern China" - written without ever visiting China - remains a classic analysis of the Communist system. Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans) nailed the reality of the Cultural Revolution better than most observers who were allowed into China for carefully managed tours.

These scholars succeeded by developing new methodologies for distant observation. They cultivated relationships with Chinese exiles, analyzed provincial newspapers, and used theoretical frameworks from organizational sociology and political science to understand systemic patterns. They also had the advantage of intellectual independence - their analysis wasn't constrained by concerns about maintaining access or preserving relationships.

The current situation requires similar innovations. Taiwan remains accessible, and there's a huge Chinese diaspora around the world. People continue to leave China, bringing stories and documents. The key is developing the analytical skills to synthesize fragmentary information into coherent understanding.

• Early Cold War scholars produced excellent China analysis without access
• Theoretical frameworks can compensate for limited direct observation
• The Chinese diaspora and Taiwan remain important information sources
• Intellectual independence may actually improve analytical clarity

There's also something seductive about studying a place that doesn't want you there - it creates a certain intellectual challenge and removes the temptation to soft-pedal criticism in exchange for continued access. As Schell notes, being cut off from China has been "an immense liberation" as a writer, allowing him to say what he really thinks without worrying about Communist Party reactions.

The Reciprocity Problem

One of the fundamental issues in US-China relations that often gets overlooked is the basic lack of reciprocity. While America has kept its doors open to Chinese students, scholars, journalists, and businesspeople - often under difficult circumstances - China has increasingly restricted access for foreigners.

This asymmetry undermines the foundation of any meaningful relationship. As Schell puts it, "without reciprocity you really don't have a game, you don't have a dialogue, you don't have anything meaningful." The numbers tell the story: nearly 300,000 Chinese students study in America, but fewer than 300 American students study in China.

The problem isn't new, but it's gotten much worse under Xi Jinping. During the reform era, there was at least some pretense of mutual exchange. Foreign scholars could do research in Chinese archives, journalists could travel relatively freely, and businesspeople could operate with reasonable autonomy. That world is disappearing.

This creates a strategic challenge for American policy. How do you maintain dialogue with a country that increasingly refuses to engage on equal terms? The tendency is either to accept one-sided arrangements or to abandon engagement altogether. Neither approach addresses the fundamental problem.

• True dialogue requires mutual access and exchange
• China's restrictions on foreign access undermine relationship foundations
• The student exchange imbalance symbolizes broader reciprocity problems
• One-sided arrangements aren't sustainable long-term

The solution may be to insist more forcefully on reciprocal treatment while keeping doors open. If Chinese scholars want access to American universities, perhaps American scholars should have similar access to Chinese institutions. If Chinese journalists can report from America, American journalists should be able to report from China.

Reading China: From Mao to Xi's Styrofoam Speeches

One of the more depressing aspects of contemporary China studies is the dramatic decline in the quality of Chinese political writing. Whatever else you might say about Mao Zedong, he could write. His essays on contradiction, on practice, and on guerrilla warfare remain intellectually engaging even if you disagree with their conclusions.

Xi Jinping's speeches, by contrast, are what Schell describes as "eating styrofoam" - incredibly turgid, bureaucratic documents that reveal little beyond their author's desire to sound important. Kevin Rudd apparently read through all of Xi's speeches for his Oxford doctorate, extracting insights about Xi's intentions, but most readers would find the exercise mind-numbing.

This stylistic decline reflects deeper problems with Chinese political discourse. The revolutionary energy and intellectual creativity that characterized earlier periods has given way to wooden bureaucratese. Everything must be filtered through approved ideological formulations, leaving little room for genuine thought or expression.

Yet these documents remain important because they're our primary window into official Chinese thinking. When direct access is limited, even boring speeches become valuable sources of information about priorities, concerns, and future directions. The challenge is developing the patience to wade through material that reads "like corporate reports."

• Earlier Chinese political writing had intellectual substance despite ideological constraints
• Contemporary Chinese political discourse has become wooden and bureaucratic
• Xi's speeches reveal intentions but require enormous patience to analyze
• Official documents remain crucial sources when direct access is limited

The contrast with earlier periods is particularly stark. The 1980s produced a flowering of Chinese intellectual life, with genuine debates about reform, democracy, and China's future direction. That energy was visible in official speeches as well as informal discussions. Today's political discourse feels scripted and lifeless by comparison.

The Music of Interior Life

Schell's novel "My Old Home" uses music as a metaphor for everything that Chinese Communism lacks - the cultivation of interior life, the development of individual consciousness, the recognition of beauty and transcendence that exists beyond political categories.

The choice of Johann Sebastian Bach as the symbolic opposite of Mao Zedong isn't accidental. Bach was all about "coming to terms with yourself, your mortality, and your God" - precisely the kind of internal development that revolutionary ideology seeks to eliminate. Where Mao wanted to rearrange the furniture of the external world, Bach explored the infinite spaces of human consciousness.

This represents a fundamental critique of not just Chinese Communism but any purely political approach to human existence. The Cultural Revolution didn't just destroy temples and historical sites - it attacked the very possibility of contemplative life, of finding meaning beyond revolutionary struggle.

Xi Jinping was deprived of this interior dimension during his formative years. He learned survival, manipulation, and control, but never developed the capacity for reflection, doubt, or genuine encounter with otherness that comes from religious or artistic experience. This limitation shapes how he approaches both domestic governance and international relations.

• Bach represents the interior life that revolutionary ideology seeks to eliminate
• The Cultural Revolution attacked contemplative traditions along with political enemies
• Xi's psychological formation lacks the dimension of genuine self-reflection
• Political solutions alone cannot address the deepest human needs

Schell's dream of bringing Beethoven's "Fidelio" to China captures this same theme. The opera is essentially a human rights story about imprisonment and liberation, about the power of love to overcome political oppression. It represents everything that Xi Jinping's China rejects about individual dignity and universal human values.

Conclusion: Tragedy and Hope in the Chinese Story

The great tragedy of contemporary China is that it has achieved what eluded the country for more than a century - becoming a modern, wealthy, powerful nation - only to see Xi Jinping threaten all of that through senseless confrontation with the world. China's success story risks being undermined by a leader trapped in the psychological patterns of his traumatic youth.

Yet Schell's analysis also provides reasons for hope. The forces of openness and reform haven't disappeared from China - they're dormant, waiting for the right moment to resurface. The country remains "deeply unresolved," pulled between competing traditions and visions of its future. What we see today under Xi Jinping represents one strand of Chinese culture, not its totality.

The historical pattern suggests that China will continue to oscillate between opening and closing, between engagement with the world and autarkic withdrawal. The current dark period isn't permanent, even if it feels overwhelming to those living through it. As Lu Xun understood a century ago, the struggle between darkness and light is eternal, but that doesn't mean darkness always wins.

What's Next: Navigating the New Reality

• Academic decoupling will accelerate - Foreign access to Chinese research and institutions will continue shrinking, forcing scholars to develop new methodologies for distant observation
• The Taiwan crisis will intensify - Xi's psychology makes him prone to escalation over Taiwan, potentially creating the most dangerous moment in US-China relations since the Korean War
• Internal Chinese pressures will build - The gap between China's global ambitions and Xi's paranoid governance style will create increasing contradictions within the system
• Reciprocity demands will grow - The US and other countries will likely insist more forcefully on mutual access and equal treatment in academic, journalistic, and business exchanges
• Diaspora scholarship will expand - Understanding China will increasingly depend on relationships with Chinese communities outside the mainland
• Technology barriers will harden - Both sides will continue restricting access to sensitive technologies, making scientific collaboration more difficult
• Cultural exchange will survive selectively - Music, art, and literature may provide channels for continued human connection even as political relations deteriorate
• Generational change looms - Xi's eventual departure will create uncertainties and potentially open space for dormant reform forces to resurface
• Strategic patience will be tested - American policy will need to balance immediate security concerns with long-term hopes for Chinese political evolution
• The research challenge will intensify - Understanding China from a distance will require new tools, methods, and intellectual courage to see clearly without access