Xi Jinping: China’s president and his quest for world power | Four Corners

[Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign no one in the world today anywhere in any other country is more powerful than president xi jinping he's declared himself chairman for life i call him chairman of everything chairman of everywhere chairman of [Music] everyone china's president xi jinping sees himself as a man of destiny he commands a country on the cusp of becoming the biggest economy the world has ever seen and he's building an army to defend it foreign if you were to sum him up what words come to mind messianic um ruthless i think he's really very focused on control right he's very focused on control over the party control over the country are turning more towards authoritarianism under xi jinping he has centralized the power around him to make china great again xi jinping is upending the global balance of power [Music] if any armed conflict breaks out between china and the united states it will be catastrophe for mankind it may become an armageddon humankind xi jinping is a name that's become familiar to us all this son of the communist revolution who rules his country by force he dreams of reviving china's lost glory and overcoming a history of humiliation the united states has named china its biggest strategic threat and australia is caught in the crosshairs tonight four corners asks who is xi jinping what drives him and what does his rise mean for the [Music] world madam speaker the president of the people's republic of china madam speaker mr president it is a joy to have friends come from afar in 2014 xi jinping was on a charm offensive he was in canberra for the honor of addressing the joint houses of the australian parliament has always viewed australia as an important partner during my visit the two sides have decided to elevate our bilateral relations into a comprehensive partnership as china grows so does australia grow and why wouldn't you want to hit yourself to that wagon that of course was the time when we're about the time when we were sealing the free trade agreement as well which was of great benefit to us and we thought we could have it all we could have a bountiful economic relationship and a steady political relationship and of course that's not the case and it won't be the case for a very long time our politicians were basking in the presence of a dictator who crushed dissent jailed opponents and led a nation accused of ethnic cleansing but money talks we had things to sell and china is our biggest customer xi jinping had his own agenda we chinese are striving to achieve the chinese dream which is the great renewal of the chinese nation the chinese dream is about enhancing the strength and the prosperity of the nation and the well-being of the chinese people we were so naive and you know i put my own hand up for that as well i was as naive as the next parliamentarian it was wishful thinking we wanted china to be a kind of a nation more like us and more like us meant democratic xi jinping was at least mouthing the right words we have set two goals for china's future development the first one is to double the 2010 gdp the second is to turn china into a modern socialist country that is prosperous democratic culturally advanced and harmonious by the middle of the century at a state dinner that night tony abbott startled china watches with a monumental misreading of what she really meant by democratic i have never heard a chinese leader declare that his country would be fully democratic by 2050 i have never heard a chinese leader commit so explicitly to a rule-based international order founded on the principle that we should all treat others as we would be treated ourselves i was there i helped actually write a bit of tony abbott's formal speech response to xi jinping tony abbott got up in particular at that at that uh banquet of the the great hall and um said he was so delighted because xi jinping has said by 2049 china would become um a modern democratic society he was so delighted our ambassador to china was absolutely mortified by it it's easy now for us to laugh at tony abbott when he referred to xi jinping as a proto-democrat but tony abbott was by no means alone when he made that statement there are many statements that political leaders have made about china the chinese communist party and xi jinping that now look ridiculous the world has changed and it's only fools and apologists who continue to defend xi jinping and the chinese communist party the darker aspects have always been there ever since the establishment of people's republic of china china was never democratic so with the elevation of xi jinping that hasn't changed [Music] [Applause] c and his wife traveled to tasmania where they were met like royalty [Applause] we knew that if we could get the president of china to visit tasmania it would put tasmania onto the map within china that the chinese people watch every step of their leader and they follow what he says to do oh yes they have a different value system to us but part of what life is is trying to get to know other people and what makes them tick and how we can work together to make the world a better place and one way you make the world a better place is through trade with tony abbott in tow c met politicians and business leaders it was all about what sea could do for the apple isle increasing trade and investment opportunities between china and tasmania over the next five years tasmania's business with china would boom topping a billion dollars a year tasmania is really a remarkable case study and i've spent quite a bit of time down there and working with people are very concerned about it in tasmania there's been a downside that certainly many tasmanians have become alarmed about for example the huge amount of investment funds flowing in from china to buy up prime agricultural land horticulture dairy operations and people starting to think well is it really no interest to have our best primary resources owned by chinese companies it was all smiles as xi jinping left australia our leaders were happy with the free trade agreement and the chinese president had his eyes on the long game extending china's influence and building its power i think china has been on a sort of mostly a single track but you know it takes opportunities where it can with australia i think australia is important as a us ally it's important as a u.s intelligence partner it's important as a big diplomatic player in the asia pacific or the indo-pacific if you like and in that respect it was worth putting time into australia uh perhaps perhaps to neutralize it as a us ally in the region i mean that's the long game uh in that respect it's about china being the most dominant country in the region xi jinping was born into a country of war and revolution on june 15 1953 his father was a communist party hero a right-hand man of mao zedong c is party royalty what is in china called a princeling but as he prefers [Music] [Music] when he was a boy his country was starving the great famine that began in the late 1950s is estimated to have killed more than 30 million people by his teens china was in the grip of the cultural revolution as mao said loose his red guards to drive out his enemies sea's father was purged something she would not forget he's a person for the culture evolution in 1966 when it started in china and so basically he was on his own i think his father was put under house arrest a few years before and so he was really kind of left as almost like a political orphan and i think that generation you know for the next few years it really made them very tough in a way very resilient and self you know kind of a self-supporting sixteen-year-old xi jinping was one of a generation of urban chinese youth now banished to live among the rural poor she was sent to shanxi province in north west china when he initially went out to the countryside he was scared frightened to use a western vernacular of freaked out by what was happening in other words his political family was under threat and in fact were being marginalized so it both hardened him it also gave him a real sense of the ups and downs of power and i think that's one reason why he's so ruthless himself [Music] he lived in a dusty village not far from the city of jannan where decades earlier mao zedong led his supporters on the fabled long march during the civil war against the american-backed nationalists these were formative years for sea in the heartland of the communist revolution he could have rejected the party but in fact he embraced it even more i think it is would be very difficult for anyone at the time to reject the party and i can see why for someone who has suffered under the cultural revolution they might actually want to embrace a party even more really that even though he and his family suffered he would want to embrace the party even more yes it is a quite common experience amongst people in china that you want your suffering to mean something this is where xi jinping built his myth sleeping in a cave carved from the hillside and working alongside peasant farmers a story he's promoted time and again so he actually was re-educated justice mao wanted justice marwan he wanted to re-educate china's young people in the 1960s most people think that cultural revolution was merely a power struggle and a purge yes it was but it was also more it was about mao trying to train up a generation of younger people who would in the end be party ideologues and supporters who would help maintain the ethos of party control and the revolution far beyond his day like mao si saw china's peasant farmers as his pathway to power he calls himself a son of yellow earth this yellow earth mythology fed into the party's belief that our true origins are in the countryside are with eternal china's past xi jinping i think always sort of talks as though he's really connected to the kind of people who live in the rural areas and they're not forgotten he's a populist in that sense he's really trying to show that he is you know kind of the like a kind of an earthly emperor mao died in 1976 ending the cultural revolution sea's father was rehabilitated and helped his ambitious son with party connections marriage to a famous singer who performed with the people's liberation army boosted his popularity sea worked his way through the ranks becoming governor of fujian province he was seen by party power brokers as a safe option loyal to the party uncontroversial straight-faced and stoic in 2008 he was made vice president she was the heir apparent and by the way he was the first chinese leader uh since 1979 1980 who had not been chosen by dang xiaoping so it was quite a big deal xi jinping was elected president in 2012 forming the next great link in the chain after chairman mao and the man who kick-started china's economic revolution dung xiaoping there's a saying in china that mao made the country won dung made the country rich she is making the country strong this is the third revolution as it were certainly i think he would be attracted to that view himself because it gives him great agency it makes him you know a figure of a history of historical change an agent of history and i think certainly he sees himself like that xi jinping revealed his vision for china what he called the china dream what mao started he would finish the final stage of the revolution to return china to the apex of global [Music] power [Music] [Music] on the national level china dream means the uh revitalization of china after all china was humiliated for more than 100 years ever since the first opium war and china need to rise up and this is a continuous process china by today is already the second largest economy in the world and in less than 10 years time china will be the largest economy in the world and china need to project its own image onto the world as a force for peace and stability and economic development when we first heard china dream a lot of us thought it was going to be a lot like the american dream which is basically a very individualist vision of having a lot of material prosperity a lot of freedom to do what you want and living as a citizen in in a powerful state but one that doesn't intrude too much so that was the american dream and the china dream i think people initially thought that that was being offered but it's become very clear that what she means by a china dream is really a state a chinese state dream it's not an individual dream it's not a dream for citizens it's a vision of a state a chinese state that's very strong that's internationally respected that can throw its weight around internationally if it needs to and that is in no way inferior to anybody else as president xi jinping moved quickly to consolidate his hold on the party and the country the moment he came into power it was pedal to the metal if you like he accelerated on all fronts to eliminate dissent to eliminate rivals to eliminate corruption now his family had been involved in lots of deals as well that's been well documented there was nothing that made chinese people more angry than seeing officials around them being in a township city province wherever high on the hog getting rich and frankly getting rich in very nefarious ways you know stealing farmers land getting cuts of deals uh you know promoting their relatives etc etc china was very corrupt it probably still is not like it was and so xi jinping used the anti-corruption campaign both as a populist measure and to purge his rivals c widened the net locking up dissidents lawyers writers and artists i remember back when xi jinping was first elevated as a leader there was actually quite a lot of expectation placed on xi jinping we are seeing turning more towards authoritarianism under xi jinping he has centralized power around him and also we're also seeing that there's increased concerns about human rights in china as well in hong kong with regards to pro-democracy activists and legislators and in xinjiang with regards to what the chinese government has been doing to vegas and other ethnic minority groups what we didn't see except for a very small handful of close observers is that xi jinping wasn't the great liberate he wasn't going to be the man who would continue the liberalizing trend in fact he was exactly the opposite he was a return in a very decisive way to the oppressive leninist party control freakery that we had so feared and it's only now as some of the more insightful and long-standing china analysts have started to expose what xi jinping was saying way back at the end of 2012 and in 2013 they were starting to say oh we were just so wrong about this man xi jinping has relentlessly crafted his own cult of personality chinese audiences have fed a constant diet of propaganda on state-run media about sea and his china dream through his firm resolve charisma and intelligence he's brought the world closer to china worldwide there's now a better understanding of china as a major country this new historical course charted by president xi jinping is the fundamental direction of chinese diplomacy in the new era the cult of sea is everywhere in the media they see the beaming father of the nations [Music] [Music] with long memories of the brutal mao years some in the party have grown nervous one of the things that the party elders have admonished him for at different times is the personality cult because for them it's too much like mal it's too much like a single capricious ruler who is everywhere but she seems to um think it works and this is another reason i think why he sort of values mao because whether you think he got things done well or badly the only way to get things done is to be a dictator in china in 2018 c made a dramatic power grab that shocked china and the world he would now effectively be president for life i think that i am as quite a surprise to many people because the presidential term limit was set precisely because mao zedong's rule that those mistakes will not happen again but then it was removed seemingly paving way for one person to have a lot of power around himself which means that potentially that could create a problem for the chinese communist party so that is a problem the chinese communist party obviously recognized itself before but now it has been completely removed and it is i think quite shocking to a lot of people even inside china as well president xi jinping is now the paramount leader of china is the president of the people's republic of china he's the general secretary of the communist party of china and he's the chairman of the central military commission so he's vested with the most important powers for china as a government leader military leader and party leader he's declared himself chairman for life i call him chairman of everything chairman of everywhere chairman of everyone the president for life enshrined his name and doctrine in the constitution xi jinping thought became the guidebook to propel the country into its new era i think cg ping thought says that the party rules all and that china is on a path to inevitable greatness and that everybody better get used to that universities run compulsory courses in xi jinping thought saturation media coverage even includes a tv show where contestants are quizzed on their knowledge of she's life and thought [Music] how far is xi jinping prepared to go he's now president for life what will he do to achieve what he wants for his country well the mission is to create a powerful strong china so 2021 is the 100th anniversary of the communist party so we'll see a bit more of this vision the problem for xi jinping is that domestically nationalism works you know his nationalistic message of a strong powerful china is something that i think almost all chinese sign up to but externally it doesn't look good i mean this is something that scares people they look at this and think well what is this bellicose sounding nationalistic country that's so big and so unknown so this is going to be a big big challenge that's going to need pretty good diplomacy [Music] at home c knows that poverty eradication among china's 1.4 billion strong population is critical to keeping the party in power that's the deal that the chinese people will sacrifice freedom for wealth [Music] [Music] [Music] the reality is that xi jinping and his colleagues believe themselves as the agents of history in a history that is about making china one of the great powers that is also a prosperous stable society that will contribute to humanity as a whole and if in that process a few individuals must be crushed or silenced a few dissidents must be thrown into jail a few national minorities in tibetan xinjiang and their religious aberrant religious beliefs must be corralled contained and reformed well that's simply the price that the great collective of the chinese people which i xi jinping and my colleagues represent that's just the price they all have to pay and it's for their good because after all i am a patriarchal leader and i know what's best for all of you the creation myth of xi jinping draws tourists from across the country who travel to the village where he spent seven long years in exile everything here is a shrine to see and all he represents posters of mao zedong hang in the cave where sea slept marxist texts and books which influenced him are on display party publications documenting his rise through the provinces are for sale locals sing his praises is a must-see for revolutionary tourists [Applause] foreign makes his living from party mythology dressing up in the uniform worn by mao's troops [Applause] here um i think the communist party of china with almost 100 million members are fully behind him and the chinese nation of 1.4 billion chinese people are also rallying behind president xi jinping in domestic economic development as well as on the international stage victor gao is a party insider who has been as close as possible to power as official translator he was trusted by the man who ignited china's economic revolution dang xiaoping he now works for a pro-government think tank i would say by my personal uh calculation no one in the world today anywhere in any other country is more powerful than president xi jinping in terms of the country he's leading in terms of the level of responsibilities he's exercising in terms of his level of responsibility for the job he's doing taking care of the welfare and the well-being of the chinese nation but also contributing to peace and development and also fighting against all kinds of false accusations and distortions mostly created by washington in terms of the rise of china [Music] under the guidance of xi jinping thought on socialism with chinese characteristics for a new era the pla has thoroughly implemented xi jinping thought on strengthening the military xi jinping is building a military as powerful as his economic might officially he spends around 250 billion dollars a year on defense others estimate the real figure maybe double that [Music] images of his battle ready troops are pumped out for international and domestic consumption certainly in china this sense of nationalism has channeled the sense of resentment and this sense of past humiliation which funnels a sort of aggressive nationalism china is a meteoric rising power the us is a colossal ruling power and when a rising power is displacing or threatening to displace a ruling power from its position at the top of every pecking order basically things get worse and then they get worse to the u.s xi jinping's china is its biggest strategic threat as long as china continues achieving or trying to achieve the china dream that xi jinping has laid out quite vividly and as long as the u.s attempts to maintain the position it's enjoyed for an american century as the leading power in the world and as the architect of a very successful international order there's going to be a a grand contest and it will discombobulate everything from american politics as we've seen here to international relations [Music] as an american ally australia is caught between its economic interests and its security as far as china is concerned australia has been even more agitated than washington in many situations and from the chinese perspective what the australian government has been doing over the past several years has been very much demonstrating hostility against china as a country against the chinese people and against the chinese political system [Music] xi jinping has made it clear on his watch australia needs to mind its step in less than 10 years time china will be larger than the united states as an economy and by the middle of the century the size of the chinese economy is expected to be double the size of the united states that gives more opportunity for countries like australia to engage with china on a peaceful basis and to do more business with china rather than for example blindly without exercising your own judgment and your own brain for example to refuse to see the mega trend coming and refuse to embrace the rise of china as an opportunity by really doing the suicidal thing to cut off yourself from china from the chinese nation and from the chinese market [Music] she has drawn battle lines across the region chinese and indian troops clashed on their border last year with casualties on both sides for xi jinping it was a propaganda coup [Music] joshua then there is the south china sea where the us and china stare each other down foreign military aircraft this is chinese navy you are approaching our military alert zone leave immediately in order to avoid his judgment i am a united states military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace xi jinping has ignored international court rulings and built military installations on disputed islands three four five six seven eight nine nine vehicles moving china in the indo-pacific is a reality for the us being here it's a choice china knows that and over time i think china wants to make the price the u.s pays for that to go up and in many respects i think china is a much more predictable player here you know china wants to dominate the region china wants to be the most powerful country in the region uh china wants its military to be their sort of you know biggest in the region and the like that's just obvious any country would want to do that of china's size be it a communist party or a dictate you know a democracy in hong kong sea has shown the world how ruthless he can be [Applause] he has crushed protest and introduced new laws putting a stranglehold on the former british territory hong kong stands as a warning to taiwan [Music] absolutely central to chinese modernisation xi jinping's program is restoring china's territorial integrity this is a big deal that means taiwan comes back and if you think about it uh regaining control of taiwan a self-governing island of about 25 million people a very modern society most importantly democratic which does not think of itself as part of the people's republic of china which has run itself for you know 70 80 years which has had an independent streak since the 19th century china says we're going to control that and i think she wants to do it on his watch and she declares he will regain taiwan even if it means war woman but [Music] china has ramped up threatening military exercises near taiwan if she attacks taiwan he could trigger a war with the united states potentially dragging in australia i think if there were a war it would be insane i think you couldn't be confident that if a war developed over taiwan and even if it began as a small war that it couldn't expand into a larger war and that once you get up the escalation ladder in a larger war then even nuclear weapons might become uh you know part of the part of the conflict if any armed conflict breaks out between china and the united states it should be catastrophe for mankind it may become armageddon for humankind for western democracies the battle lines are already drawn can we live in a world where the dominant economic power and all of the other power that comes with that is one that fundamentally rejects the values of our society well we can live in that world but it's going to be a much less comfortable world and it's going to be one in which we'll have you know terms dictated to us more than we have them dictated to us now now that doesn't mean china gets its way but it means that china is much more difficult to deal with and might get its way on a lot of things so yeah life's going to get harder for us [Music] if all you're doing is sitting around and feeling upset or fearful or angry that china is bigger and more powerful then you've put us on a very dangerous spiral i feel and that's something that worries me not only as an observer but also as a citizen of the united states and also as a person you know who wants doesn't want the world to go to hell everything in xi jinping's life has led him to this point he rules his country like an emperor his china dream is within reach and he's warning the west if they try to stop him they'll pay some days i think the battle is over and china's influence is now so great and xi jinping and the chinese communist party are so determined to become the dominant hegemony in the world that there's nothing we can do but really we can't give up like that i mean when you think of what's at stake when you think of the freedoms that we on a daily basis take for granted and enjoy now we're dealing with this radically different view of the world which is not a modern one i mean it's not like china is a power that sprung from nowhere it's got historic routes going back many many centuries this is not something that can be just shifted this history we're moving into this world we're moving into there is no road map there is no easy road map [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 1,053,197

Rating: 4.27881 out of 5

Keywords: news, abc, abc news, china, china news, xi jinping, xi jinping documentary, xi jinping australia, four corners, four corners xi jinping, four corners china, four corners abc, 4 corners, politics, china's president, chairman for life, china's president xi jinping, world politics, world news

Id: 1FjOIqSuhO8

Length: 44min 53sec (2693 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/8E4F787A43D3807E9EA2]

Tony Abbott: "I have never a Chinese leader declare that his country would be fully democratic by 2050. I have never heard a Chinese leader commit so explicitly to a rule-based international order..."

Taiwan's got you covered, Tony.

[u/tiram001]

Look everyone! It's a world leader that's actively committing genocide! Not to worry though, well meaning morons will try and deflect by offering up shallow whataboutisms.

[u/mikeshouse2020]

The CCP, party of degenerates and scum

[u/GuyLeRauch]

He's not controlling everything in China. He's the public face of the select few control everything in China.

[u/joan_wilder]

“chairman for life” is a funny way to say “king.”

[u/ChooseBeef]

Winnie the Pooh: Live action movie

[u/Nnelg1990]

Was expecting a movie about the creation of a yellow fluffy bear, but they've made the cartoon characters way to realistic.

[u/elginksy]

This comment section is so strange that I feel I have to preface this by completing a captcha to prove to certain people I'm not a bot or something. Every time something critical of the CCP, and Xi in particular, is posted on this site it seems like its absorbed relatively uncritically. It's like the expectation of apologists primes everyone for a knee-jerk. There isn't even a lot of comments about the content just people arguing about whether it is or isn't propaganda. If you're accepting a large Western media company's special report on an ideologically opposed nation's government mostly supported by random talking heads from economic think tanks advising NATO and shit at face value, I'd say you're as much of a mark as anyone who blindly thinks China Good Because Capitalist USA Bad.

Like, they introduce the one fuckin Chinese guy as being from a (scare quotes) "pro-government think tank," yet leave out that exact same fact about the Australian dudes who are ALSO presidents or partners at policy think tanks advising for their own governments. Probably a good thing to point out, yeah, but why leave that out about the other two homies like their politics and activities wouldn't also color the viewer's perception of what they're saying.

Above all else, this documentary is just kind of lame. 60 Minutes-ass sensational news story to scare grandma. Don't know who these people are or why I should necessarily listen to them, but the litany of voices driving the perspective of the segment sort of displace any one specific narrative voice to trust or distrust. Kind of whatever. Don't get why anyone would be particularly mad or defensive of this 45 minute eight o clock news special story.

"You are not immune to propaganda" - Garfield the Cat

[u/skaliton]

Hey look downvoted and hidden comments I wonder if they are...wow so far they are all Xinnie bots and the real posts are viewable how rare.

​

Silly West Taiwan bots