(REUTERS/Carlos Barria)Russia's President Vladimir Putin and China's President Xi Jinping review an honour guard contingent during a welcoming ceremony at the Xijiao State Guesthouse ahead of the fourth Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit, in Shanghai May 20, 2014.
China, for decades a place where a near-equal collective controlled the country through a party hundreds of millions strong, now belongs to one man — Xi Jinping, the man who became president in 2012.
It's been a mysterious, fascinating transition to observers as Xi is a man few words and fewer expressions. However, in a profile of Xi in this week's New Yorker called 'Born Red', we get a sense of what kind of man has been able to rise to such incredible heights of power.
He's the kind of man who, in a number of anecdotes, sounds a lot like Russian ruler Vladimir Putin:
Xi didn’t have a questing mind, but he excelled at managing his image and his relationships; he was now meeting foreign investors, so he stopped wearing Army fatigues and adopted a wardrobe of Western suits. Liao said, “Not everyone could get an audience with him; he would screen those who wanted to meet him. He was a good judge of people.”
Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel, is known for his transformation into a pragmatic diplomat as well as being a very good judge of people.
"For [Putin], others are participants in a game he directs. He chooses inputs, they react. He judges," Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy of Brookings write in the book "Mr. Putin." "Their responses to his input tell him who they think he is—but by responding they also tell him who they are, what they want, what they care about."
And in the same way Putin's power in Russia seems unshakable, Xi has taken over China with a totality unseen since Mao Zedong. He's jailed the highest level officials since the early days of China's Communist Party; he's taken over running the economy; he's installed an anti-corruption campaign that is purging his enemies business; the military and politics alike, and he's created over a dozen new titles for himself.
Xi even has his own series of animated adventures for kids, akin to Putin's carefully crafted image for the country.
(How Hwee Young/AFP/Getty)Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a Bilateral Meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on November 9, 2014 in Beijing, China.
And when it comes to exerting control, both men seem to use the same tactics. You'll remember when Putin kept the world guessing by disappearing for 10 days in March. Xi once did the same thing in order to consolidate power before he became president.