The Roots of Xi Jinping's Russian Obsession

"The great changes are coming. We are pushing for these changes together. Take care, my dear friend," said Chinese President Xi Jinping as he bid farewell to President Putin after his visit to Russia on March 23^rd this year.

"Bona Voyage!" Putin grabbed Xi’s hand tightly.

This exchange makes the Americans worried. Analysts believe that Russia, which is deeply involved in the Ukraine conflict, has finally teamed up with China as a junior partner. And this partnership will pose a serious threat to the entire Western world.

Historically, Washington had an upper hand in the relationship between the United States, Russia (previously the Soviet Union), and China. The Nixon government chose to pursue a policy of wooing China and confronting the Soviet Union in the 1970s, even though ideologically, Brezhnev's Soviet Union was a far more open country than Mao Zedong's China.

Now that China, a world manufacturing giant, has more bargaining chips in this triangle relationship. The Biden administration, for whatever reason, has chosen Russia, the energy giant, as the main adversary of the United States, the financial giant. The Xi Jinping administration has sided with Putin without much hesitation. A quasi-alliance, economic, political, and possibly in the future, military, has been consolidated by the recent handshake between Xi and Putin.

Apart from geopolitical considerations, cultural and psychological factors have played important roles in this decision, which Western analysts and experts seem to have little understanding of.

Xi Jinping, born in 1953, was only thirteen years old when the Cultural Revolution began in 1966. At Mao Zedong's command, all schools were closed overnight, and students were incited to "make a revolution." Many teachers were arbitrarily locked up in prisons called "bullpens" or “niupeng” in Chinese, where they were tortured, publicly humiliated, and sometimes even beaten to death. Libraries were closed, all books were banned, and many were even burned. All cultural products such as music, art, and movies, whether Chinese or foreign, were all banned and destroyed under the label of "reactionary, bourgeois, and revisionist." Writers, musicians, and artists suffered brutal persecution. Many were tortured to death or committed suicide.

The Cultural Revolution not only destroyed Chinese culture but also devastated China's economy. In 1968, to solve the problem of unemployment, Mao Zedong sent seventeen million urban youth over the age of fifteen to the countryside. At that time, the Chinese countryside, which had been ruined by years of collectivization, was already in dire straits, with people barely clothed and fed. During the famine years, many places were even littered with dead bodies. Urbanites, especially those from the middle and upper classes, among them Xi, the future ruler of China, were shocked by the poverty in the countryside. When Xi Jinping was 16 years old in 1969, he was sent from Beijing to the Yan'an countryside in Shaanxi Province. He lived there for seven years. Those years helped shape his political belief and governance style.

For Xi Jinping's generation, Russian literature and art were their most important spiritual nourishment during their formative years. China imported a large amount of Russian culture in the 1950s. Works by Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Sholokhov, and many others were translated into Chinese. Composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich were revered as the highest classics in the Chinese music world.

              In impoverished China, even in cities, books were considered a luxury. Only intellectuals and high-ranking government apparatchiks would collect them. Such cadres also had access to a large number of "internally circulated materials," which were mostly foreign books translated specifically for the party officials. For instance, Khrushchev’s secret speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," and Medvedev's "Let History Judge" and so on.

Books from the previous generation were also passed on to the younger generation. Many sent-down youths brought books to the countryside. And those young people with similar backgrounds formed their own small circles there, sharing and discussing banned books, and forbidden political news and opinions. At that time, having and sharing Russian and Soviet literature works became a symbol of privilege among young people.

Some also brought musical instruments such as violins and accordions. Under the dark sky, they lit campfires and sang "Moscow Nights" and "Katyusha." They jokingly called their poor villages "A Place Far from Moscow," after a famous Soviet novel.

At that age, dreams began to run wild. Boys would always imagine a girl in a balaclava in their minds. In girls' hearts, there was always a hero like Pavel Korchagin. Ironically, in the suffocating darkness of Mao suits and Little Red Books, the Soviet Union was a light from above for many young Chinese. It represented ideal, romance, and freedom. In that ray of hope, a group of young people, including today’s strongman Xi Jinping,  grew up. They would later dominate China's destiny,

Two examples showed the obsession with Russian culture among the CCP leaders. On November 14, 2006, at a conference in China's literary and artistic circles, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Hu Jintao went on stage to sing a song: "Moscow Nights." Everyone in the audience sang along. Some who had studied in the Soviet Union proudly sang along in Russian. In 2013, Xi Jinping, who had just taken office, brought his wife and singer Peng Liyuan to visit Russia. He mentioned to Russian university students the Russian literary works he had read when he was young, including Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and so on. Peng Liyuan revealed to the Russians that her husband's favorite song when he was young was "The Red Berry Flowers Are in Bloom," and that he was persecuted by the authorities for teaching others to sing the song.

Since Xi Jinping became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2012, he and Putin have met on various occasions more than 30 times. Before 2022, Putin's attitude towards Xi Jinping could be described as lukewarm. At that time, Putin seemed to be more anxious to establish closer relations with the United States. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping was eager to win recognition from the Russians. However, the dynamic between the two leaders changed prior to the Ukraine war. In February 2022, Putin attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics and talked with Xi Jinping. From the official news photos, it is clear that Putin was seeking something from China. Xi Jinping, on the other hand, was overflowing with confidence and pride.

There is no doubt that interests are the basis of state relations. The leaders of China and Russia have established their current quasi-alliance relationship based on their own interests and their confrontation with the West, led by the United States. However, there is still considerable room for maneuvering for the personal preferences of national leaders in international relations. Xi Jinping and his generation of Chinese leaders' admiration for Russian culture may motivate them to go a few extra miles in the Sino-Russo relationship. For the United States, these extra miles may potentially cause the US to lose its hegemony, which it has enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.