Research centres promoting Xi Jinping’s ideas are proliferating

CHINA’S PRESIDENT, Xi Jinping, is hardly ever grilled in public about what he thinks. The few interviews he has given have been highly staged. But his propagandists have been building a network of institutes devoted to studying his thoughts. In June one was established to research “Xi Jinping thought on the rule of law”. The following month, two others were founded to analyse, respectively, his pronouncements on economics and green development. It is the biggest mobilisation of academic effort to parse the speeches of a serving leader since the era of Mao Zedong.

China now has 18 Xi-thought research centres. Many of them focus on a particular topic such as politics, culture, science, education, religion, diplomacy or national security. Mr Xi’s ideas about these matters make up what is officially known as “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era”. The Communist Party adopted this as one of its guiding philosophies at a five-yearly congress in 2017. The first study centres were opened soon afterwards.