What the Floods Say About Xi Jinping

When the Yangtze River flooded in 1998 and inundated villages in central China, Jiang Zemin, the Communist Party’s general secretary, was on the scene, bullhorn in hand, to encourage local relief efforts.

Ten years later, his successor, Hu Jintao, stood among the rubble after an earthquake rocked Sichuan province, in the country’s southwest.

Last week, after floodwaters caused by a collapsing glacier tore through the Himalayas between Nepal and China, leaving more than 1,100 people dead and thousands more missing, the party’s current general secretary, Xi Jinping, stayed largely and safely in Beijing.

In the United States, where politicians have to worry about the needs and feelings of voters, elected representatives are expected to be more visible and engaged in national crises.

In 2021, Republican Senator Ted Cruz earned public condemnation when he was caught absconding to Mexico while Texas suffered a deep freeze and power outages.

As a Communist dictator, Xi doesn’t have to fret over public-approval ratings.

Yet his absence signals a bigger problem for China: Xi has become so powerful that he has lost touch with the country he governs.

Despite being professed Marxists, China’s leaders rarely interact with the working class.

But Xi at least used to try to seem like a man of the people.

In 2013, about a year into his tenure, Chinese media made a big deal out of his visit to a steamed-bun restaurant in Beijing; the state-owned China Daily praised him for showing his “common touch.” Today, there’s nothing common about Xi Jinping.

He has amassed greater personal power than any other Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, the Communist regime’s founder, who died half a century ago.

To justify his outsize role in China’s government, Xi’s tireless propagandists portray him as something grander than a party boss: a philosopher king, whose doctrine of wisdom , called Xi Jinping Thought, is meant to be both studied and obeyed.

He is the great global statesman, guiding foreign policy into a new era of peace and prosperity.

His various “global initiatives” outline his vision for a reformed world order. [ View: The aftermath of Nepal’s flash floods ] Mere mortals such as Jiang and Hu had to stomp around muddy disaster zones to prove their worth.