In recent times, China observers, the media, and the public often affirm that Xi Jinping—the current Chinese president— shares likewise leadership style of Mao Zedong due to his dominance in the Party and his repressive method against political adversaries. Some even alert a phenomenon of “the cult of Xi” in China, which is reminiscent to Mao’s golden era. Xi Jinping seems to act as a paramount leader as Mao Zedong. However, is such a similarity well founded or merely imaginary? Is there any substantial evidence confirming that Xi inherits Mao’s leadership legacy? I intend to answer this question by systematically comparing Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong’s personality and leadership style. Accordingly, more than a hundred of Mao and Xi’s verbal data are under scrutiny by means of the program LIWC. The program output yields an array of scores, which permits to establish the two leaders’ “Big Five Personality Traits” for the purpose of comparison. This outcome hence helps us better evaluate the extent to which Xi Jinping may be like his revolutionary predecessor.

Tony C. Lee obtained his PhD from France’s Advanced School for Social Science Studies (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, EHESS). He successively worked as a postdoctoral/assistant researcher at the University of Taipei and National Ilan University in Taiwan. Currently, his is a guest researcher at the Center for Global Politics (CGP) of Freie Universität Berlin. Dr. Lee’s research interests range from China studies, comparative area studies to political psychology. He can be reached at tonylee@zedat.fu-berlin.de