Xi Jinping, born on 15 June 1953 is a Chinese politician who has been General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, and President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 2012. Xi has been China’s supreme leader, the most visible political leader in the People’s Republic of China, since 2012.
The son of Chinese Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, he was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father’s purge during the Cultural Revolution and lived in a yaodong in the village of Liangjiahe, where he joined the CCP and worked as the local party secretary.
After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a “Worker-Peasant-Soldier student”, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China’s coastal provinces.
Xi married the well-known Chinese folk singer Peng Liyuan in 1987. Like many Chinese couples in the 1980s, Xi and Peng were introduced via friends. During their romance, Xi was said to be intellectual, enquiring about singing styles.
Until his political ascent, Peng Liyuan, a household name in China, was more known to the public than Xi. Because of their respective career pursuits, the couple frequently lived apart.
Peng has been far more prominent as China’s “first lady” than her predecessors; for example, Peng hosted the U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama on her high-profile visit to China in March 2014.
Xi and Peng have a daughter named Xi Mingze, who graduated from Harvard University in the spring of 2015. While at Harvard, she used a pseudonym and studied Psychology and English. Xi’s family has a home in Jade Spring Hill, a garden and residential area in north-western Beijing run by the CMC.
