Is Xi Jinping a Reformer?

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Xi Jinping is dealing with the local offshoots of these protests. He prevents students who want to come in from a neighboring province to sort of protest at the larger city nearby. It's hard to say how many Xi Jinping was directly involved in, but certainly he would have, to some extent, managed to crack down locally. And so you really get this sense that even when he was a lowly official, and he didn't really have any stake in it, that he was out to defend the Party Center.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is a product of Mao Zedong’s revolution. On Sunday, he'll become the most powerful Chinese leader since the Communist Party’s founder — and maybe the most powerful person in the world.

This episode was produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Additional production and fact checking by Siona Peterous, Avishay Artsy, Hady Mawajdeh, and Jillian Weinberger

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