Xi Jinping’s troubled early years are detailed in Communist Party campaign article

By Jun Mai in South China Morning Post, July 29, 2017
President Xi Jinping’s troubled early years are described in detail in a recent article by official media, underlining the political strongman’s firm determination to serve the Communist Party amid his family’s harsh political persecution.
Xi had written 10 letters of application for membership in the Communist Party before finally being admitted as a member of a stained family, according to the article on Friday in the Study Times, a publication affiliated with the party’s top academy.
It is not the first time that details of Xi’s troubled early life have been released in state media, highlighting some of the experiences that are said to have contributed to his tough and resilient personality.
The latest retelling is part of a massive public campaign that aims to raise awareness of Xi’s personal authority, ahead of a major power reshuffle scheduled this fall.
The campaign includes lengthy articles and documentaries published or aired by several official media outlets, which have credited Xi with the country’s major achievements of the past few years.
Xi, whose father was a wrongly disgraced senior official, was at various points besieged by mobs, jailed, homeless and sent to the rural area for hard labour, according to the article.
Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping’s father and a member of the first generation of China’s Communist revolutionists, became a target of in-party persecution in 1962.
The older Xi, once the deputy premier of the State Council, was jailed and publicly humiliated during the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long era of political and social turmoil that started in 1966.
However, his faith in the party and its political ideals – which remained unshaken, despite his 16 years of imprisonment – greatly influenced the younger Xi, according to the article.
In a letter celebrating his father’s birthday in 2001, the younger Xi wrote: “No matter it was the White Horror (the Nationalist crackdown on the Communists), or the ultra-leftist era (referring to the Cultural Revolution); despite being framed up and being in adverse conditions, my father’s faith for communism was unshaken, and he always believed our party is great, righteous and glorious.”
The article recounted Xi’s memories of being sent for seven years of hard labour in Shaanxi in Northwest China. “[I] did everything, blazing the trail, sowing, herding, carrying droppings … I barely took a rest,” he was quoted as saying in 1995.
Xi used to carry 100 kilograms of wheat on one shoulder while walking 5km of mountainous road, the article said.http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2104580/xi-jinpings-troubled-early-years-are-detailed-communist-party