Chinese leader Xi Jinping is employing the sort of autocratic tactics once wielded by Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to stamp out opposition and stack a government’s leadership with acolytes as one prepares to extend his reign.
In a throwback to the most powerful Communist leaders of the 20th century, Xi has purged dozens of senior officials—even his own protégés—overseen the growth of a cult of personality and demanded absolute loyalty.
His goal: dictate China’s destiny for years to come in order to grow the country’s power and match the U.S. in military might and economic clout. Now in his 14th year as party leader, the 73-year-old Xi has eliminated conventions put in place after Mao to prevent a return to one-man rule.
But such strongman tactics come with risks. In squelching debate and stoking a climate of fear, Xi has made policymaking more arbitrary and mistakes harder to correct. Without clear succession planning, Xi also risks the fate that befell Stalin and Mao, whose deaths in office unleashed struggles for power that ended up unraveling their political visions.
Culling the top
Stalin and Mao eliminated rivals and quashed dissent as they consolidated absolute power. Both leaders oversaw sweeping purges that condemned millions of officials, intellectuals and ordinary citizens to jail, forced labor and death. In launching the disastrous Cultural Revolution, Mao mobilized zealous youths to attack alleged counterrevolutionaries, unleashing mob violence and social turmoil.
While Xi shunned such fanaticism, he has purged senior officials at a speed and scale unseen since the Mao era. Unending allegations of corruption and political dissent aim to compel officials to demonstrate loyalty to Xi and ensure that no one can undermine him.
Xi has ramped up the culling since starting his third term as party leader in 2022. He took down three sitting members of the elite Politburo in six months, the biggest purge at this level since 1976. China’s ministers for defense, foreign affairs and agriculture have been removed, along with other military commanders, regional leaders, financial regulators and state-enterprise executives.
Borrowing a Mao-era practice, Xi requires Politburo members to critique themselves and each other in annual sessions he chairs, reviewing their performances using criteria that include loyalty to his leadership.
For Communist leaders, “the more successful you are, the more enemies are afraid of you and mobilize to destroy you, and therefore the more you need to purge,” said Joseph Torigian, a historian at American University in Washington, who has studied power struggles in the Soviet Union and Mao-era China. “There is no equilibrium—the enemies continue to manifest.”
No term limits or clear successor
Xi has pushed aside guardrails installed decades ago to prevent a return to Mao-style autocracy, in which one man ruled China for life.
During his first decade in power, Xi discarded age-based retirement norms for senior officials and repealed a two-term limit on China’s presidency, clearing his path to remain party chief and head of state indefinitely.
Xi, whose stint as Communist Party leader is already the longest since Mao, appears poised to claim a fourth five-year term as party chief in 2027 and as state president the following year.
Delegating to seniors
Xi concentrated key policymaking powers into his own hands during his first two terms as party leader, asserting personal control over everything from economic planning to national security.
In his third term, Xi has delegated some responsibilities to a small group of loyalists who are in their late 60s and early 70s—considered too old to be viable successors. He hasn’t promoted into the party’s seven-man leadership body anyone young and experienced enough to be a suitable heir, according to party insiders.
This approach is risky. Succession struggles after Stalin and Mao fueled political turmoil.
Stalin’s death in 1953 sparked a succession fight and ultimately a process of “de-Stalinization” that dismantled his personality cult and program of mass terror. After Mao died in 1976, his chosen successor purged a group of rivals known as the “Gang of Four” before getting pushed aside by Deng Xiaoping, who became paramount leader and reversed many of Mao’s policies.
Listening less
Xi has further centralized decision-making over major policies such as China’s five-year plans, which chart goals for the economy and allocate state resources for achieving them.
China’s government previously consulted foreign institutions and experts such as the World Bank and American economist Joseph Stiglitz when preparing its five-year plans. But Xi shuns such counsel.
He also keeps tight control over the process. For the latest plan, he gave a trusted proxy, Premier Li Qiang, a more hands-on role. His advisers have accepted fewer suggestions from lower-level officials and outside experts while drafting the plan, according to an analysis by the Asia Society Policy Institute.
One consequence: Xi has so far shrugged off signs that China needs to boost consumption to fight persistent deflation that is dogging the economy.
Making and enforcing rules
Xi has set up an extensive system of rules and enforcement that closely dictates the behavior of party members and government workers.
His administration has enacted or revised party regulations on duty and conduct at a pace far surpassing each of his post-Mao predecessors.
To enforce these rules, Xi empowered the party’s top internal watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, to scrutinize the party’s 100 million members and police their loyalty.
Beijing has embedded CCDI officials into major party and state institutions and has deployed inspection teams across the country.
Communist Party authorities disciplined nearly a million people last year, the highest annual tally on record.
Xi has also retained an element of Stalin and Mao’s approaches to social control: encouraging people to monitor and report on each other. Even so, Xi has avoided the mass terror and mob violence these two leaders once unleashed.
“The scope, intensity and violence of Stalin’s purges during the Great Terror far exceeded Xi’s own effort to rectify the Chinese Communist Party,” said Jonathan Czin of the Brookings Institution. “We don’t see the people on the receiving end of Xi’s wrath being liquidated.”
Cult of personality
Like Stalin and Mao before him, Xi portrays himself as the greatest Communist theorist of his generation. He claims credit for major policies and links them to his own political philosophy, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” which has been enshrined in the Communist Party charter and China’s Constitution—alongside Mao Zedong Thought.
New rules require all prospective party members to study Xi Jinping Thought during the admission process. Once in the party, members must take part in regular study sessions on Xi’s policies.
Party propaganda portrays Xi as the central and indispensable figure in China’s renaissance.
PropagandaScope, a platform that monitors Chinese state media, tracked a recent resurgence in state-media references to Xi as the “people’s leader,” echoing Mao’s title of “Great Leader.”
Tapping in to Mao’s legacy, analysts say, helps Xi justify his autocratic style and legitimize his efforts to extend his rule.
“Whether it’s Stalin or Mao or Xi, they all act with clearheaded rationality” in enforcing their policies and entrenching their power, said Guoguang Wu, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “They are certainly ruthless—there are no emotional factors in their calculations.”
Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com