Xi Jinping eats simple food, shuns “formalist” party dogma and takes his wife abroad with him on trips. In case anyone could possibly doubt that China’s new president is a man of the people, he was even reported to have recently hailed a taxi. Last week a website approved by the State Council Information Office carried a story with a too-good-to-be-true quote from a Beijing cabby who was supposed to have been flagged down by the leader-in-disguise. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like general secretary Xi?” he is said to have asked unsuspectingly – presumably in Beijing’s equivalent of a Cockney accent.
The story was later officially declared a fake, too improbable even for a leader whose style is palpably more human than his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who made R2-D2 in Star Wars look like a thing of flesh and blood. Mr Xi may confine himself to official limousines, but his style is refreshingly different. He has tapped into public outrage at the lavishly corrupt lives of party hacks, banning banquets in a campaign captured in the slogan “one soup, four dishes”. Instead of moaning on about the “three represents” or the “scientific outlook on development” – the less than fetching catchphrases of his predecessors – he talks in almost American terms about “the China Dream”.
As China’s economy slows after three decades of breakneck growth, few doubt that it stands on the threshold of wrenching change. With Mr Xi overseeing that transition, it is of vital concern whether his change of style heralds a change of substance. In short, is Mr Xi a closet reformer? And, even if he is, in an age of collective leadership and ossified vested interests, will he be able to act on his convictions?