Xi Jinping

In office; set the country's carbon targets

For as long as China has had a modern power grid, coal has generated most of its electricity. In the first half of 2026, that ended. Coal supplied 49.7% of China's power, dropping below half for the first time.

Updated 6 days ago

Publicly backing the private sector after years of tighter control

China's private firms account for about 60% of its economic output and most of its urban jobs. In April 2025, they got their first dedicated legal protection. The Private Economy Promotion Law, passed by the National People's Congress Standing Committee, took effect May 20, 2025.

Updated Jul 29

Oversees state media that aired the disclosure

For a year, Beijing said it was not on the battlefield. On May 8, 2026, China's state broadcaster aired interviews with two engineers from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). They said they had been stationed at Pakistani airbases during the four-day clash with India in May 2025, working alongside Pakistan Air Force crews flying Chinese-built J-10CE fighters.

Updated May 31

Driving military modernization toward 2027/2035/2049 milestones; holds sole CMC operational authority after January 2026 purge of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli

China's National People's Congress formally approved a 7% defense budget to 1.94 trillion yuan ($277 billion) in March 2026, a new record, while setting the country's lowest GDP growth target since 1991. Military spending has outpaced economic growth every year for over a decade.

Updated May 31

Met Trump in mid-May 2026

A year ago, the US defense secretary used the word Taiwan five times in his Shangri-La keynote. On Saturday in Singapore, Pete Hegseth did not say it once.

Updated May 30

Overseeing strategic shift toward 'high-quality development'

For three decades, China's annual growth target was a formality — the economy nearly always blew past it. On March 5, Premier Li Qiang set the 2026 target at 4.5% to 5%, the lowest figure Beijing has published since it began the practice in the early 1990s. The downgrade from the previous three years' 'around 5%' signals that China's leadership now expects structurally slower expansion for the foreseeable future.

Updated May 30

Overseeing the strategic direction of the 15th Five-Year Plan

China adopted five-year economic planning from the Soviet Union in 1953. The 15th Five-Year Plan, unveiled March 5, 2026 at Beijing's Two Sessions, shifts from the growth-first model (dominant since Deng Xiaoping's 1980s reforms) toward technological self-reliance and economic security. The plan earmarks $70 billion for semiconductors and targets 5% GDP growth, per Premier Li Qiang's Government Work Report.

Updated May 30

Expected to attend Miami summit

The Group of Twenty, operating by consensus since 1999, hosts its December 2026 summit at Trump National Doral Miami. For the first time, it's excluding South Africa—a founding member—and seating Poland instead, the world's twentieth-largest economy.

Updated May 27

General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since 2012

In April 2025, U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods peaked at 145 percent. Nine months later, President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping describe their relationship as 'extremely good' and are planning four bilateral summits in 2026, including Trump's first visit to Beijing since 2017.

Updated May 27

Chief advocate for TCM modernization as national strategy

For over 2,000 years, traditional Chinese medicine practitioners have diagnosed patients by reading pulses and examining tongues—subjective skills that take decades to master. Now AI systems are doing it in under two minutes.

Updated May 26

Ordered a thorough investigation and accountability under the law

A gas explosion ripped through the Liushenyu coal mine in Shanxi Province on the evening of May 22, when 247 workers were underground. By the next day, state media reported roughly 90 dead, more than 100 hospitalized, and the mine's executives in detention.

Updated May 23

Active - overseeing domestic consumption push

Every winter, China empties its cities. Some 9 billion passenger journeys—more than the total global population—occur over 40 days as hundreds of millions of migrant workers return to their home villages for Spring Festival. This is Chunyun, the largest annual human migration on Earth.

Updated May 23

Presiding over unprecedented military purge

Xi Jinping appointed all seven members of China's Central Military Commission in 2022. By February 2026, only two remained: Xi and anti-corruption chief Zhang Shengmin. The investigation of Zhang Youxia, Xi's childhood friend and the PLA's most senior combat-experienced officer, marks the most dramatic purge of China's military leadership since the Cultural Revolution.

Updated May 23

Declared 'complete victory' over poverty in February 2021

In 1820, more than 80% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. By 2019, that figure had fallen to 8.9% at the then-$2.15/day line, a decline of roughly 0.35 percentage points per year sustained over two centuries.

Updated May 22

In office

In April 2025, average US tariffs hit their highest level since 1943. Nine months later, the global economy is still growing. The IMF's January 2026 World Economic Outlook projects 3.3% global growth (slightly better than feared), thanks to supply-chain rerouting, surging AI investment, and a US-China truce pulling tariffs back from their 145% peak.

Updated May 22

Advancing strategic ties with middle powers

Canada followed the U.S. in imposing 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in October 2024. Seventeen months later, Prime Minister Mark Carney flew to Beijing and cut them to 6.1%—the first explicit break with American trade policy since Trump began his tariff offensive.

Updated May 21

Completed back-to-back hosting of Trump (May 13-15) and Putin (May 19-20); signed 40+ Russia-China agreements while holding off on pipeline pricing commitment

Trump arrived in Beijing on May 13 and left May 15 with a trade truce and Boeing jet orders. Putin followed four days later; on May 20, he and Xi signed more than 40 agreements and issued a 9,935-word declaration against US missile defenses. The gas pipeline Moscow had flagged as a 'substantial step' did not materialize.

Updated May 21

Hosting Trump for May 14-15 Beijing summit; China denied supplying weapons to Iran

The legal foundation for Trump's tariff strategy collapsed on February 20 when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs. The decision voided both the 25% Iran secondary levy and other emergency-based duties on China. Trump signed a 10% global replacement under Section 122 of the Trade Act within hours, dropping China's effective rate from 47% to about 35%.

Updated May 20

Committed China to carbon neutrality by 2060

China's CO2 emissions fell 1% in the first half of 2025, extending an 18-month plateau that began in March 2024. For the first time, clean power generation—not economic slowdown—has driven emissions down in the world's largest polluter. The peak may finally be structural rather than cyclical.

Updated May 19

Directing China's 15th Five-Year Plan infrastructure push (2026-2030)

China just front-loaded $42 billion in infrastructure spending for early 2026—281 projects approved before the calendar even flipped. The U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed with $1.2 trillion in 2021, has spent just 21% of its funds as of December 2024.

Updated May 19

Secured rare earth leverage in trade negotiations

China controls 70% of rare earth mining and 90% of refining—the 17 obscure elements that power everything from F-35 fighter jets to iPhones. In April 2025, Beijing weaponized that dominance. When Trump announced Liberation Day tariffs, China retaliated by restricting exports of seven rare earth elements. By October, it expanded controls to twelve elements and invoked the foreign direct product rule, the same tool America used to choke China's chip industry. It claims jurisdiction over any product globally that touches Chinese rare earth technology.

Updated May 19

Balancing North Korea relations while courting South Korea economically

On January 4, 2026, North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles traveling 900-950 kilometers at 50-kilometer altitudes—Pyongyang's first test of 2026. Hours before, Kim Jong Un ordered production capacity expanded 250 percent at a tactical weapons factory; the launch coincided with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung's departure for Beijing to meet Xi Jinping.

Updated May 19

Ordered PLA ready for Taiwan operations by 2027

On December 29-30, 2025, China executed its largest military drills around Taiwan to date, called Operation 'Justice Mission 2025,' deploying 130 aircraft, 22 warships, and live-fire exercises across seven zones encircling the island. Over two days, fighter jets crossed the median line, naval vessels simulated port blockades at Keelung and Kaohsiung, and PLA ground forces conducted coordinated long-range strikes both north and south of Taiwan. The drills escalated on December 30 with 10 hours of live-fire activities in designated 'temporary danger zones,' forcing cancellation of 76 domestic flights and delays to 300+ international flights affecting over 106,000 passengers. China framed the exercises as dual punishment: for the record $11 billion U.S. arms package announced December 17, and for Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi's warning that Tokyo could intervene militarily if Beijing blockades Taiwan.

Updated May 16

Updated 2035 climate targets while renewable curtailment crisis deepens

In August 2023, wind turbines in China's far west nearly crashed the entire national grid. Low-frequency oscillations from poorly integrated wind farms in Xinjiang threatened a blackout across the world's most populous country. Twenty-eight months later, the crisis has intensified. In early 2025, curtailment rates nearly doubled—solar waste jumped from 3% to 5.7%, wind from 3.9% to 6.6%. Record installations overwhelmed transmission capacity. Tibet now throws away one-third of its renewable electricity. China's answer: a 750 million volt-ampere AI-controlled smart transformer and over $83 billion in annual grid investment to stabilize a system buckling under its own clean energy success.

Updated May 16

Overseeing military modernization toward 2027 Taiwan capability goals

Chinese hackers have burrowed deep into America's power grids, water systems, telecommunications networks, and transportation infrastructure—not to steal secrets, but to flip a kill switch. The Pentagon's December 2024 report confirms Beijing expects to fight and win a war over Taiwan by 2027.

Updated May 16

Watching a U.S. policy reversal that may still require Chinese regulatory blessing to matter

The Trump administration just did the thing Washington has spent years swearing it wouldn't do: let China buy a near-top-tier Nvidia AI chip again. Now a China hawk in Congress is demanding the Commerce Department explain, in detail, why this isn't a strategic own-goal.

Updated May 15

Directing coordinated military and economic pressure on Japan while rejecting all criticism

What began with Chinese carrier fighters lighting up Japanese jets with radar near Okinawa has mushroomed into a full-spectrum crisis. After China and Russia sent bombers circling Japan, the US flew B-52s with Japanese fighters over the Sea of Japan.

Updated May 11

Ultimate authority over PLA posture toward Japan and Taiwan

In early December 2025, China's Liaoning carrier strike group sailed through waters near Japan's southwest island chain and into the western Pacific. Over two days, between Okinawa's main island and Minamidaito and then east of Kikai Island, it conducted roughly 100 take-offs and landings of J-15 fighters and helicopters.

Updated May 10

Counterparty in U.S.–China trade disputes and soybean purchase commitments

Since 2018, U.S. farmers have been caught in Trump-era tariff battles—first the U.S.–China trade war, now tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico, and others. To counter lost exports and depressed prices, the Trump administrations funded large farm aid through the Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corporation: $12 billion in 2018, $16 billion in 2019.

Updated May 10

Defending China’s export-led growth model and using export controls as leverage

In December 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron warned Europe might impose U.S.-style tariffs on Chinese goods if Beijing doesn't curb its ballooning trade surplus. In an interview after his state visit to China, Macron said the surplus is "killing" European customers and called it a "life or death" struggle for EU industry, especially autos and advanced manufacturing.

Updated May 10

Overseeing China’s military pressure campaign around Taiwan and the East China Sea

On December 6, 2025, two Chinese J-15 carrier fighters from the Liaoning locked fire-control radar on Japanese F-15s over international waters southeast of Okinawa. Japan's defense minister Shinjiro Koizumi called the lock-ons "dangerous" and "extremely regrettable," and Tokyo lodged a formal protest.

Updated May 10