Chapter 03 From Bun Xi to Emperor Xi (1)

Xi Jinping, in his first year in office, created a “bun fiasco” in which he personally lined up to buy buns for lunch. One day, he suddenly appeared without warning in front of a bun restaurant, Qingfeng Bun, in Beijing and lined up with the ordinary people to buy buns. He bought 4 buns with a plate of small dishes and sat down to eat with the other people. When the news was reported, it caused a national sensation and the party leaders and presidents lined up with the crowd to buy and eat lunch, although there were many plainclothes guards around to protect him.

Xi Jinping was so pro-people. The bun restaurant became a red-hot spot and not only Beijing citizens scrambled to buy buns but also the people from other cities queued up to taste the buns. In less than two years, the Qingfeng Bun restaurant had expanded and opened up 300 stores in Beijing and other cities. Someone also made up a song online: “pro-people love people Xi Da Da”. The personal worship to Xi started from his purchase of buns and the effect of propaganda was surprisingly good.

Then some Xi worshipers made up the song “Marry Xi if You Want to Marry” and renamed the song “The East is Red” in praise of Mao as “The East is Red Again”, with the old song filled with new lyrics and changed the song “People’s Great Savior” in the praise of Mao to “People’s Great Blessing” in the praise of Xi.

At the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing in 2016, each Tibetan delegate had a Xi Jinping medallion wearing on their clothes, just like people wore the Mao Zedong medallion during the Cultural Revolution. Each delegate offered khata to Xi the Great, just like Tibetans offered khata to Chairman Mao back then. This delighted Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping also compared “Liangjiahe” in Shaanxi Province, where he was lived and worked as an intellectual youth for a few years, to Mao’s “Shaoshan Village”, the birthplace of Mao.

Xi Jinping promoted the new campaign of personal worship like Mao Zedong back then, his personal worship campaign caused a backlash of disgust in public opinion. The famous outspoken real estate developer Ren Zhiqiang, he has a nickname of Ren Cannon, opened fire in the network, opposing Xi Jinping’s cult of new personal worship. He was banned by Xi Jinping, deleting his online name to fight him down. Ren Cannon had been banned to speak on internet for several years afterwards. However, he continued to criticized Xi in other channels against cult of personal worship. Xi Jinping could not stand him anymore. He ultimately arrested him in the name of anti-corruption, and sent him to prison. He was sentenced 18 years jail time because he criticized Xi Jinping.

In 2016, Xi Jinping made a big fanfare and personally led a team to inspect the three major medias in Beijing (CCTV, Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily). Xinhua News Agency posted a big slogan “We are ready to listen to your order”. Xi Jinping wants the party medias to belong to the party, in fact, “the party medias belong to Xi”, Xinhua News Agency dedicated a day to open a front-page column “study Xi in progress”. If there are no new instructions or activities today, they will repeat yesterday’s headlines, and if there are no new Xi activities on the third day, the headlines of the previous two days will be published. Such propaganda of Xi’s personal worship is more than that of the Cultural Revolution party newspaper headlines. At that time, only a Mao quotation had to be published on the front page on Party’s newspapers.

Xi Jinping took advantage of anti-corruption to grab and keep his power. Anti-corruption threatened the Grand Patriarch Jiang Zemin and Zeng Qinghong. In March 2015 Jiang Zemin camp plotted a coup using Hong Kong media’s rumors of deposing Xi Jinping. Zeng Qinghong had planned to take advantage of Xi Jinping’s foreign visits, adopting the model to remove Hu Yaobang. In the Chinese Communist Party Politburo meeting, the government’s decided to remove Xi Jinping from office in accordance with the party’s internal procedures, with Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao presiding over the meeting of the Politburo. The meeting planned to be held while Xi Jinping was visiting Pakistan and could not return in time. The decision of Jiang and Zeng to hold the “life meeting” on March 23, Pakistan’s National Day, had been supported by Li Changchun, Jia Qinglin, Li Lanqing and other members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. The coup did not happen because Hu Jintao refused to support.