A rap video featuring President Xi Jinping is soaring to the top of the charts in China. It's called "The Reform Group Is Two Years Old" - and samples the anti-corruption speeches of "Big Daddy Xi." As we hear from Neal Conan in the Pacific News Minute, it's just the latest sign of a growing cult of personality.
Chinese media often refer to the President as Xi Dada, a nickname that roughly translates as Uncle Xi. Before his recent hip hop debut, another pop tune idealized him as the perfect prospect any woman would want for a husband and earlier this month, a widely published report explored the circumstances of the four times President Xi has been known to cry.
At the same time, Xi Jinping has asserted absolute control over the Communist Party. An analysis by Chris Buckley in the New York Times notes the sudden use of a significant term. More and more, Buckley wrote last month, President Xi is referred to as, "the Core". Here's an example, from a speech by the party secretary of Hunan province Xu Shousheng " Resolutely safeguard, the core, General Secretary Xi JinPing, and implement to the letter all the decisions of the center."
Dozens of senior officials have also used the term, which was first coined by Deng Xiaoping, to bolster the authority of Jiang Zemin, who took over after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Retrospectively, both Deng and Mao Tse Tung have been described as the core leaders of their generations.
One distinction between Xi and those earlier leaders- he appears to rely almost exclusively on himself, with no prominent deputies or advisers...no equivalent to Zhou en-Lai, the premier under Mao who met with Henry Kissinger to negotiate the Sino-American breakthrough.
