The World According to Xi Jinping

China’s president has staked his reputation on fulfilling the “Chinese Dream.” Here’s what he envisions.

Benjamin Carlson

THE ATLANTIC -  Sep 21, 2015

The Governance of China, a collection of the political theories of Chinese President Xi Jinping, is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I mean that quite literally: The book, as an object, is lovely. There are 515 pages of creamy, heavy, acid-free stock; gold-flecked endpapers; a full-page frontispiece portrait, complete with a facsimile of Xi’s signature; 22 glossy, double-sided photo pages; a silver-embossed, silk-bound cover; and a sturdy white dust jacket.
This is China’s new scripture, a book, published in October 2014, that the government has willed into being a bestseller. Chinese state media claim that over 5 million copies have already been sold around the world. Translators have labored to put the book’s 79 speeches and addresses into immaculate English, French, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Japanese. They say it’s a hit in Bulgaria. Supplicants to the Communist Party, such as Mark Zuckerberg, have made a point of brandishing the book in public like the latest offering from Malcolm Gladwell.
Yet from all the available evidence, very few people outside of China—except maybe Bulgaria and Mark Zuckerberg—have read it. No major American news outlet has reviewed the book in detail. None of my journalist friends in Beijing has read it (one used his copy, which I borrowed, to buttress the wall of his cubicle). It’s a book that seems to matter more for the phenomena it has generated than for what it contains.

READ MORE......