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𝗡𝗔𝗪𝗔𝗙
𝗡𝗔𝗪𝗔𝗙
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Sunday 21 June 2026 03:15:15 GMT
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In 1969, a fifteen-year-old Xi Jinping read a Russian novel in a cave, and it explains more about modern China than any policy paper. The novel was Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done, the same book that radicalized Lenin. The hero, Rakhmetov, is a nobleman's son who sleeps on a bed of nails to forge his willpower. Xi was living in a cave dug into a cliff in northern Shaanxi, sleeping on a brick bed, legs covered in lice. He read about Rakhmetov and decided the Russian had identified something true. He and the other sent-down youths pulled the cotton padding off their beds and slept on bare brick. On rainy days they walked outside and got soaked. On snowy days they rubbed snow on their bare skin. Xi told this story himself, on the record, in 2013, to Russian sinologists in Moscow, as president of the People's Republic of China. He invoked Rakhmetov by name again to leaders in Kazan in October 2024. He has never tried to hide which model he operates inside. But for over a decade, the dominant Western model assumed Xi would behave like a late-Soviet cynic, a pragmatist who would mouth socialist slogans but ultimately liberalize markets, soften repression, and accommodate the global order. That model predicted his anti-corruption campaign would peter out within a year or two. It's now in its thirteenth year and has punished over 4.7 million officials. The man kept telling everyone he was a believer. The analysts kept assuming he was performing. The boy in the cave wasn't performing.
In 1969, a fifteen-year-old Xi Jinping read a Russian novel in a cave, and it explains more about modern China than any policy paper. The novel was Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done, the same book that radicalized Lenin. The hero, Rakhmetov, is a nobleman's son who sleeps on a bed of nails to forge his willpower. Xi was living in a cave dug into a cliff in northern Shaanxi, sleeping on a brick bed, legs covered in lice. He read about Rakhmetov and decided the Russian had identified something true. He and the other sent-down youths pulled the cotton padding off their beds and slept on bare brick. On rainy days they walked outside and got soaked. On snowy days they rubbed snow on their bare skin. Xi told this story himself, on the record, in 2013, to Russian sinologists in Moscow, as president of the People's Republic of China. He invoked Rakhmetov by name again to leaders in Kazan in October 2024. He has never tried to hide which model he operates inside. But for over a decade, the dominant Western model assumed Xi would behave like a late-Soviet cynic, a pragmatist who would mouth socialist slogans but ultimately liberalize markets, soften repression, and accommodate the global order. That model predicted his anti-corruption campaign would peter out within a year or two. It's now in its thirteenth year and has punished over 4.7 million officials. The man kept telling everyone he was a believer. The analysts kept assuming he was performing. The boy in the cave wasn't performing.

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