Michael Sheridan has been reporting on China since 1989 for the Sunday Times, Reuters, ITN and the Independent. His new biography of Xi Jinping covers the character-making moments in his past and then brings his rule right up to date, offering an insight into how his leadership is shaping the contemporary environment that businesses in China must navigate. Paul French talked to Michael Sheridan about how businesses in China can thrive by studying Xi’s background and motivations.
How is Xi different from previous leaders in China?
Xi is personally modest. ‘The Party’s Interests Come First’ is the Xi family slogan engraved on his father’s tomb. He rarely, if ever, talks about himself in the first person. Nonetheless, he’s presided over the most intense personification of authority in decades. Yet this has happened incrementally, accompanied by purges of the supposedly corrupt and helped by the absence of rivals. It’s hard to think of another figure in Chinese politics to match his stature.
How can we understand Xi’s motivations? What can British businesses do to thrive in China under Xi’s leadership?
Party training teaches cadres to exploit opportunities and to be active and dynamic when the chance arises to advance the revolution. Xi is a dedicated Marxist-Leninist who has doubled down on the party as an agent of change as well as an instrument of governance. It’s really important for businesses in China to have somebody on board who has studied Marxism-Leninism because it is their counterpart’s school of management. A good starting point is the vintage work by the Jesuit China-watcher László Ladány The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921-1985: A Self-Portrait (1988), which tells the story through the party’s own documents. Since the late period includes the formative years of Xi as a cadre, it repays study. What does this mean for the West? It means that Xi’s new China will seize advantage where it can, and the party’s ability to concentrate resources at scale is already transforming industries like EVs. This is a formidable power.
What qualities have allowed Xi to rise so far?
Xi was forced to be a loner by his own childhood when he lost his family, his education and his home during the Cultural Revolution. He found himself living in a cave on a mountainside in an impoverished area of central China. It’s actually a tale of great personal resilience. It made him a decision-taker. For example, he decided to stick with the party and applied eight times for membership until he was accepted. When he got back to Beijing as a student, his peers found him friendly but reserved, a young man who ‘always had his eye on the prize’ and who told his discontented friends that they should not go abroad but should have faith in the party and stay in China to succeed. All this is well documented. As for risk-taking, the greatest risk of all was to run for the party leadership in 2012 when the outcome was far from certain. And this, remember, is someone who knows that the price of failure in that system can be very high.
What does Xi’s ongoing rule mean for us here in Britain and perhaps more widely in Europe? Do you think either the UK or the EU can forge something new and more mutually beneficial with Xi?
I have little patience with diplomats who persist in thinking that Britain’s skills and history enable it to play a special role with China. Time and again, ministers are persuaded that another trip to Beijing or more exchanges will somehow change the power calculus. They don’t. We have to adapt. The facts are that the UK is pretty good at doing business. We make good products and deliver modern services. Those are things which China wants. So let’s pursue trade, lobby hard for UK companies and get in there to compete. But you don’t help your cause by weakening your politics. The way to prosper is to stay strong and not to give a sense that this country can be split off from its friends. Engagement is necessary but realism matters. We should make it clear that the UK stands with its allies and that is the strongest framework for successful business and for UK firms and businesspeople to work safely in China.
