Had there not been a waiting list to get into a juvenile detention centre in Beijing in 1968, things could have been different for Xi Jinping. Mr Xi will be anointed tomorrow as secretary-general of China’s Communist party but, during the Cultural Revolution, he was just days away from spending years behind bars.
Mr Xi recounted his close shave with prison, and subsequent dispatch to the country for political re-education, in a 2000 interview that provided a rare glimpse of his early days. “My life there was rich,” he said, reminiscing about seven years in rural Shaanxi province. “I got used to the local life and became integrated with the masses.”
Those masses will be watching tomorrow and wondering, like the rest of the world, what kind of leader Mr Xi will be. He will become head of state in March and is expected to take the helm of the military, solidifying control of China’s three branches of state power.