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President Jinping attended the 26th APEC Leaders'Informal Meeting and strengthened the peaceful development of the Asia-Pacific region.

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深化周边友好 共促亚太繁荣――写在习近平主席出席亚太经合组织第二十六次领导人非正式会议，对巴布亚新几内亚、文莱和菲律宾进行国事访问并在巴新同建交太平洋岛国领导人会晤之际-中新网

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11月15日至21日，习近平主席将对巴布亚新几内亚、文莱、菲律宾进行国事访问，并在巴新同建交太平洋岛国领导人会晤。

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Greenland Hongkong and Kuwait set up a total of $8 billion fund to focus on acquiring global landmarks.

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绿地集团·绿地香港官网 >>

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China: Xi jinping

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Xi Jinping ( SHEE jin-PING ; Chinese: 习近平; pinyin: ; [ɕǐ tɕîn pʰǐŋ]; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been serving as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, and president of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013. Xi has been the paramount leader of China, since 2012.

The son of Chinese Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father's purge during the Cultural Revolution. He lived in a yaodong in the village of Liangjiahe, where he joined the CCP after several failed attempts 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 was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, before becoming governor and party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. Following dismissal of the party secretary of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to replace him for a brief period in 2007. He subsequently joined the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) of the CCP the same year and served as first secretary of the Central Secretariat in October 2007. In 2008, he was designated as Hu Jintao's presumed successor as paramount leader; to that end, Xi was appointed vice president of the PRC and vice chairman of the CMC. He officially received the title of leadership core from the CCP in 2016.

Xi is the first CCP general secretary born after the establishment of the PRC. Since assuming power, Xi has introduced far-ranging measures to enforce party discipline and to impose internal unity. His anti-corruption campaign led to the downfall of prominent incumbent and retired CCP officials, including a former member of the PSC. He has also enacted or promoted a more aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regard to China's relations with the U.S., the nine-dash line in the South China Sea, the Sino-Indian border dispute, and the political status of Taiwan. He has sought to expand China's African and Eurasian influence through the Belt and Road Initiative. Xi has expanded support for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), advanced military-civil fusion, overseen targeted poverty alleviation programs, and has attempted to reform the property sector. He has also promoted " common prosperity", a series of policies designed with stated goal to increase equality, and used the term to justify a broad crackdown and major slew of regulations against the tech and tutoring sectors in 2021. He met with Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou in 2015, the first time PRC and Republic of China leaders met, though relations deteriorated after the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the presidential elections in 2016. He has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China with a zero-COVID approach and has overseen the passage of a national security law in Hong Kong, dramatically increasing the clampdown on the opposition in the city.

Often described as an authoritarian leader by political and academic observers, Xi's tenure has seen an increase of censorship and mass surveillance, a deterioration in human rights including the internment of one million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, a cult of personality developing around him, and the removal of term limits for the presidency in 2018. Xi's political thoughts have been incorporated into the party and national constitutions, and he has emphasized the importance of national security and the need for CCP leadership over the country. As the central figure of the fifth generation of leadership of the PRC, Xi has significantly centralized institutional power by taking on a wide range of leadership positions, including chairing the National Security Commission, as well as new steering committees on economic and social reforms, military restructuring and modernization, and the Internet. He and the CCP Central Committee additionally passed a " historical resolution" in November 2021, the third such resolution after Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, further consolidating his power.

Early life and education

Xi Jinping was born in Beijing on 15 June 1953, the second son of Xi Zhongxun and his wife Qi Xin. After the founding of the PRC in 1949, Xi's father held a series of posts, including Party propaganda chief, vice-premier, and vice chairperson of the National People's Congress. Xi had two older sisters, Qiaoqiao, born in 1949 and An'an (安安; ), born in 1952. Xi's father was from Fuping County, Shaanxi, and Xi could further trace his patrilineal descent from Xiying in Dengzhou, Henan.

Xi went to the Beijing No. 25 School, and then Beijing Bayi School, in the 1960s. He became friends with Liu He, who attended Beijing No. 101 School in the same district, who later became China's vice-premier and a close advisor to Xi after he became China's paramount leader. In 1963, when he was aged 10, his father was purged from the CCP and sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, Henan. In May 1966, the Cultural Revolution cut short Xi's secondary education when all secondary classes were halted for students to criticise and fight their teachers. Student militants ransacked the Xi family home and one of Xi's sisters, Xi Heping, committed suicide from the pressure.

Later, his mother was forced to publicly denounce his father, as he was paraded before a crowd as an enemy of the revolution. His father was later imprisoned in 1968 when Xi was aged 15. Without the protection of his father, Xi was sent to work in Liangjiahe Village, Wen'anyi, Yanchuan County, Yan'an, Shaanxi, in 1969 in Mao Zedong's Down to the Countryside Movement. He worked as the party secretary of Liangjiahe, where he lived in a cave house. According to people who knew him, this experience led him to feel affinity with the rural poor. After a few months, unable to stand rural life, he ran away to Beijing. He was arrested during a crackdown on deserters from the countryside and sent to a work camp to dig ditches, but later returned to the village, spending a total of seven years there.

The misfortunes and suffering of his family in his early years hardened Xi's view of politics. During an interview in 2000, he said, "People who have little contact with power, who are far from it, always see these things as mysterious and novel. But what I see is not just the superficial things: the power, the flowers, the glory, the applause. I see the bullpens and how people can blow hot and cold. I understand politics on a deeper level." The bullpens was a reference to Red Guards' detention houses during the Cultural Revolution.

After being rejected seven times, Xi joined the Communist Youth League of China in 1971 by befriending a local official. He reunited with his father in 1972, because of a family reunion ordered by premier Zhou Enlai. From 1973, he applied to join the CCP ten times and was finally accepted on his tenth attempt in 1974. From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student in Beijing. The engineering majors there spent about 15 percent of their time studying Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought and 5 percent of their time doing farm work and "learning from the People's Liberation Army".

Rise to power

From 1979 to 1982, Xi served as secretary for his father's former subordinate Geng Biao, the then vice premier and secretary-general of the CMC. In 1982, he was sent to Zhengding County in Hebei as deputy party secretary of Zhengding County. He was promoted in 1983 to secretary, becoming the top official of the county. Xi subsequently served in four provinces during his regional political career: Hebei (1982-1985), Fujian (1985-2002), Zhejiang (2002-2007), and Shanghai (2007). Xi held posts in the Fuzhou Municipal Party Committee and became the president of the Party School in Fuzhou in 1990. In 1997, he was named an alternate member of the 15th Central Committee of the CCP. However, of the 151 alternate members of the Central Committee elected at the 15th Party Congress, Xi received the lowest number of votes in favour, placing him last in the rankings of members, ostensibly due to his status as a princeling.

From 1998 to 2002, Xi studied Marxist theory and ideological education in Tsinghua University, graduating with a doctorate in law and ideology in 2002. In 1999, he was promoted to the office of Vice Governor of Fujian, and became governor a year later. In Fujian, Xi made efforts to attract investment from Taiwan and to strengthen the private sector of the provincial economy. In February 2000, he and then-provincial party secretary Chen Mingyi were called before the top members of PSC - general secretary Jiang Zemin, premier Zhu Rongji, vice president Hu Jintao and Discipline Inspection secretary Wei Jianxing - to explain aspects of the Yuanhua scandal.

In 2002, Xi left Fujian and took up leading political positions in neighbouring Zhejiang. He eventually took over as provincial Party Committee secretary after several months as acting governor, occupying a top provincial office for the first time in his career. In 2002, he was elected a full member of the 16th Central Committee, marking his ascension to the national stage. While in Zhejiang, Xi presided over reported growth rates averaging 14% per year. His career in Zhejiang was marked by a tough and straightforward stance against corrupt officials. This earned him a name in the national media and drew the attention of China's top leaders.

Following the dismissal of Shanghai Party secretary Chen Liangyu in September 2006 due to a social security fund scandal, Xi was transferred to Shanghai in March 2007, where he was the party secretary there for seven months. In Shanghai, Xi avoided controversy and was known for strictly observing party discipline. For example, Shanghai administrators attempted to earn favour with him by arranging a special train to shuttle him between Shanghai and Hangzhou for him to complete handing off his work to his successor as Zhejiang party secretary Zhao Hongzhu. However, Xi reportedly refused to take the train, citing a loosely enforced party regulation that stipulated that special trains can only be reserved for "national leaders". While in Shanghai, he worked on preserving unity of the local party organisation. He pledged there would be no 'purges' during his administration, despite the fact many local officials were thought to have been implicated in the Chen Liangyu corruption scandal. On most issues, Xi largely echoed the line of the central leadership.

Politburo Standing Committee member

Xi was appointed to the nine-man PSC at the 17th Party Congress in October 2007. He was ranked above Li Keqiang, an indication that he was going to succeed Hu Jintao as China's next leader. In addition, Xi also held the first secretary of the CCP's Central Secretariat. This assessment was further supported at the 11th National People's Congress in March 2008, when Xi was elected as vice president of the PRC. Following his elevation, Xi has held a broad range of portfolios. He was put in charge of the comprehensive preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, as well as being the central government's leading figure in Hong Kong and Macau affairs. In addition, he also became the new president of the Central Party School of the CCP, its cadre-training and ideological education wing. In the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Xi visited disaster areas in Shaanxi and Gansu. He made his first foreign trip as vice president to North Korea, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Yemen from 17 to 25 June 2008. After the Olympics, Xi was assigned the post of committee chair for the preparations of the 60th Anniversary Celebrations of the founding of the PRC. He was also reportedly at the helm of a top-level CCP committee dubbed the 6521 Project, which was charged with ensuring social stability during a series of politically sensitive anniversaries in 2009.

Xi's position as the apparent successor to become the paramount leader was threatened with the rapid rise of Bo Xilai, the party secretary of Chongqing at the time. Bo was expected to join the PSC at the 18th Party Congress, with most expecting that he would try to eventually maneuver himself into replacing Xi. Bo's policies in Chongqing inspired imitations throughout China and received praise from Xi himself during Xi's visit to Chongqing in 2010. Records of praises from Xi were later erased after he became paramount leader. Bo's downfall would come with the Wang Lijun incident, which opened the door for Xi to come to power without challengers.

Xi is considered one of the most successful members of the Princelings, a quasi-clique of politicians who are descendants of early Chinese Communist revolutionaries. Former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, when asked about Xi, said he felt he was "a thoughtful man who has gone through many trials and tribulations". Lee also commented: "I would put him in the Nelson Mandela class of persons. A person with enormous emotional stability who does not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings affect his judgment. In other words, he is impressive". Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson described Xi as "the kind of guy who knows how to get things over the goal line". Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd said that Xi "has sufficient reformist, party and military background to be very much his own man".

Trips as Vice President

In February 2009, in his capacity as vice-president, Xi Jinping embarked on a tour of Latin America, visiting Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, and Malta, after which he returned to China. On 11 February 2009, while visiting Mexico, Xi spoke in front of a group of overseas Chinese and explained China's contributions during the international financial crisis, saying that it was "the greatest contribution towards the whole of human race, made by China, to prevent its 1.3 billion people from hunger". He went on to remark: "There are some bored foreigners, with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us. First, China doesn't export revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?" The story was reported on some local television stations. The news led to a flood of discussions on Chinese Internet forums and it was reported that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was caught off-guard by Xi's remarks, as the actual video was shot by some accompanying Hong Kong reporters and broadcast on Hong Kong TV, which then turned up on various Internet video websites.

In the European Union, Xi visited Belgium, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania from 7 to 21 October 2009. He visited Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, and Myanmar on his Asian trip from 14 to 22 December 2009. He later visited the United States, Ireland and Turkey in February 2012. This visit included meeting with then U.S. president Barack Obama at the White House and then vice president Joe Biden; and stops in California and Iowa, where he met with the family that previously hosted him during his 1985 tour as a Hebei provincial official.

Leadership

Accession to top posts

A few months before his ascendancy to the party leadership, Xi disappeared from official media coverage and cancelled meeting with foreign officials for several weeks beginning on 1 September 2012, causing rumors. He then reappeared on 15 September. On 15 November 2012, Xi was elected to the posts of general secretary of the CCP and chairman of the CMC by the 18th Central Committee of the CCP. This made him, informally, the paramount leader and the first to be born after the founding of the PRC. The following day Xi led the new line-up of the PSC onto the stage in their first public appearance. The PSC was reduced from nine to seven, with only Xi and Li Keqiang retaining their seats; the other five members were new. In a marked departure from the common practice of Chinese leaders, Xi's first speech as general secretary was plainly worded and did not include any political slogans or mention his predecessors. Xi mentioned the aspirations of the average person, remarking, "Our people ... expect better education, more stable jobs, better income, more reliable social security, medical care of a higher standard, more comfortable living conditions, and a more beautiful environment." Xi also vowed to tackle corruption at the highest levels, alluding that it would threaten the CCP's survival; he was reticent about far-reaching economic reforms.

In December 2012, Xi visited Guangdong in his first trip outside Beijing since taking the Party leadership. The overarching theme of the trip was to call for further economic reform and a strengthened military. Xi visited the statue of Deng Xiaoping and his trip was described as following in the footsteps of Deng's own southern trip in 1992, which provided the impetus for further economic reforms in China after conservative party leaders stalled many of Deng's reforms in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. On his trip, Xi consistently alluded to his signature slogan the "Chinese Dream". "This dream can be said to be the dream of a strong nation. And for the military, it is a dream of a strong military", Xi told sailors. Xi's trip was significant in that he departed from the established convention of Chinese leaders' travel routines in multiple ways. Rather than dining out, Xi and his entourage ate regular hotel buffet. He travelled in a large van with his colleagues rather than a fleet of limousines, and did not restrict traffic on the parts of the highway he travelled.

Xi was elected president on 14 March 2013, in a confirmation vote by the 12th National People's Congress in Beijing. He received 2,952 for, one vote against, and three abstentions. He replaced Hu Jintao, who retired after serving two terms. In his new capacity as president, on 16 March 2013 Xi expressed support for non-interference in China-Sri Lanka relations amid a United Nations Security Council vote to condemn that country over government abuses during the Sri Lankan Civil War. On 17 March, Xi and his new ministers arranged a meeting with the chief executive of Hong Kong, CY Leung, confirming his support for Leung. Within hours of his election, Xi discussed cyber security and North Korea with U.S. President Barack Obama over the phone. Obama announced the visits of treasury and state secretaries Jacob Lew and John F. Kerry to China the following week.

Anti-corruption campaign

Xi vowed to crack down on corruption almost immediately after he ascended to power at the 18th Party Congress. In his inaugural speech as general secretary, Xi mentioned that fighting corruption was one of the toughest challenges for the party. A few months into his term, Xi outlined the Eight-point Regulation, listing rules intended to curb corruption and waste during official party business; it aimed at stricter discipline on the conduct of party officials. Xi also vowed to root out "tigers and flies", that is, high-ranking officials and ordinary party functionaries.

Xi initiated cases against former CMC vice-chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, former PSC member and security chief Zhou Yongkang and former Hu Jintao chief aide Ling Jihua. Along with new disciplinary chief Wang Qishan, Xi's administration spearheaded the formation of "centrally-dispatched inspection teams" (). These were essentially cross-jurisdictional squads of officials whose main task was to gain more in-depth understanding of the operations of provincial and local party organizations, and in the process, also enforce party discipline mandated by Beijing. Many of the work teams also had the effect of identifying and initiating investigations of high-ranking officials. Over one hundred provincial-ministerial level officials were implicated during a massive nationwide anti-corruption campaign. These included former and current regional officials ( Su Rong, Bai Enpei, Wan Qingliang), leading figures of state-owned enterprises and central government organs ( Song Lin, Liu Tienan), and highly ranked generals in the military ( Gu Junshan). In June 2014, the Shanxi provincial political establishment was decimated, with four officials dismissed within a week from the provincial party organization's top ranks. Within the first two years of the campaign alone, over 200,000 low-ranking officials received warnings, fines, and demotions.

The campaign has led to the downfall of prominent incumbent and retired CCP officials, including members of the PSC. Xi's anti-corruption campaign is seen by critics, such as The Economist, as a political with the aim of removing potential opponents and consolidating power. Xi's establishment of a new anti-corruption agency, the National Supervision Commission, ranked higher than the supreme court, has been described by Amnesty International's East Asia director as a "systemic threat to human rights" that "places tens of millions of people at the mercy of a secretive and virtually unaccountable system that is above the law."

Xi has overseen significant reforms of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), CCP's highest internal control institution. He and CCDI Secretary Wang Qishan further institutionalised CCDI's independence from the day-to-day operations of the CCP, improving its ability to function as a bona fide control body. According to The Wall Street Journal, any anti-corruption punishment to officials at or above the vice ministerial level need approval from Xi. Another article from The Wall Street Journal said that when he wants to neutralise a political rival, he asks inspectors to prepare hundreds of pages of evidence. The article also said that he sometimes authorises investigations on close associates of a high-ranking politician to replace them with his own proteges and puts political rivals in less important positions to separate them from their political bases. Reportedly, these tactics have even been used against Wang Qishan, Xi's close friend.

Censorship

Since Xi became the CCP general secretary, censorship, including internet censorship, has been significantly stepped up. Chairing the 2018 China Cyberspace Governance Conference on 20 and 21 April 2018, Xi committed to "fiercely crack down on criminal offenses including hacking, telecom fraud, and violation of citizens' privacy." During a visit to Chinese state media, Xi stated that "party-owned media must hold the family name of the party" (党和政府主办的媒体必须姓党) and that the state media "must embody the party's will, safeguard the party's authority".

His administration has overseen more Internet restrictions imposed in China, and is described as being "stricter across the board" on speech than previous administrations. Xi has taken a very strong stand to control internet usage inside China, including Google and Facebook, advocating Internet censorship in the country under the concept of internet sovereignty. The censorship of Wikipedia has also been stringent; as of April 2019, all versions of Wikipedia have been blocked in China. Likewise, the situation for users of Weibo has been described as a change from fearing that individual posts would be deleted, or at worst one's account, to fear of arrest.

A law enacted in September 2013 authorized a three-year prison term for bloggers who shared more than 500 times any content considered "defamatory". The State Internet Information Department summoned a group of influential bloggers to a seminar instructing them to avoid writing about politics, the CCP, or making statements contradicting official narratives. Many bloggers stopped writing about controversial topics, and Weibo went into decline, with much of its readership shifting to WeChat users speaking to very limited social circles. In 2017, telecommunications carriers in China were instructed by the government to block individuals' use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) by February 2018.

Xi has spoken out against " historical nihilism", meaning historical viewpoints that challenge the official line of the CCP. Xi said that one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union has been historical nihilism. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has established a telephone hotline for people to report acts of historical nihilism, while Toutiao and Douyin urged its user to report instances of historical nihilism. In May 2021, the CAC reported that it removed two million online posts for historical nihilism.

Consolidation of power

Political observers have called Xi the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, especially since the ending of presidential two-term limits in 2018. Xi has notably departed from the collective leadership practices of his post-Mao predecessors. He has centralised his power and created working groups with himself at the head to subvert government bureaucracy, making himself become the unmistakable central figure of the new administration. Beginning in 2013, the CCP under Xi has created a series of Central Leading Groups: supra-ministerial steering committees, designed to bypass existing institutions when making decisions, and ostensibly make policy-making a more efficient process. The most notable new body is the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms. It has broad jurisdiction over economic restructuring and social reforms, and is said to have displaced some of the power previously held by the State Council and its premier.

Xi also became the leader of the Central Leading Group for Internet Security and Informatization, in charge of cyber-security and Internet policy. The Third Plenum held in 2013 also saw the creation of the National Security Commission of the CCP, another body chaired by Xi, which commentators have said would help Xi consolidate over national security affairs. In the opinion of at least one political scientist, Xi "has surrounded himself with cadres he met while stationed on the coast, Fujian and Shanghai and in Zhejiang." Control of Beijing is seen as crucial to Chinese leaders; Xi has selected Cai Qi, one of the cadres mentioned above, to manage the capital. Xi has also been believed to have diluted the authority of premier Li Keqiang, taking authority over the economy which has generally been considered to be the domain of the premier. In 2022, Xi appointed his close ally Wang Xiaohong as the Minister of Public Security, giving him further control over the security establishment.

In its sixth plenary session in November 2021, CCP adopted a historical resolution, a kind of document that evaluated the party's history. This was the third of its kind after ones adopted by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and the document for the first time credited Xi as being the "main innovator" of Xi Jinping Thought while also declaring Xi's leadership as being "the key to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation". In comparison with the other historical resolutions, Xi's one did not herald a major change in how the CCP evaluated its history. To accompany the historical resolution, the CCP promoted the terms Two Establishes and Two Safeguards, calling the CCP to unite around and protect Xi's core status within the party.

Cult of personality

Xi has had a cult of personality constructed around himself since entering office with books, cartoons, pop songs and dance routines honouring his rule. Following Xi's ascension to the leadership core of the CCP, he had been referred to as Xi Dada (习大大, Uncle or Papa Xi), though this stopped in April 2016. The village of Liangjiahe, where Xi was sent to work, has become a "modern-day shrine" decorated with CCP propaganda and murals extolling the formative years of his life.

The CCP's Politburo named Xi Jinping lingxiu (领袖), a reverent term for "leader" and a title previously only given to Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong and his immediate successor Hua Guofeng. He is also sometimes called the "pilot at the helm" (领航掌舵). On 25 December 2019, the Politburo officially named Xi as "People's Leader" (人民领袖; rénmín lǐngxiù ), a title only Mao had held previously.

Removal of term limits

In March 2018, the party-controlled National People's Congress passed a set of constitutional amendments including removal of term limits for the president and vice president, the creation of a National Supervisory Commission, as well as enhancing the central role of the CCP. On 17 March 2018, the Chinese legislature reappointed Xi as president, now without term limits; Wang Qishan was appointed vice president. The following day, Li Keqiang was reappointed premier and longtime allies of Xi, Xu Qiliang and Zhang Youxia, were voted in as vice-chairmen of the CMC. Foreign minister Wang Yi was promoted to state councillor and General Wei Fenghe was named defence minister.

According to the Financial Times, Xi expressed his views of constitutional amendment at meetings with Chinese officials and foreign dignitaries. Xi explained the decision in terms of needing to align two more powerful posts-general secretary of the CCP and chairman of the CMC-which have no term limits. However, Xi did not say whether he intended to serve as party general secretary, CMC chairman and state president, for three or more terms.

Economy and technology

Xi was initially seen as a market reformist, and the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee under him announced that "market forces" would begin to play a "decisive" role in allocating resources. This meant that the state would gradually reduce its involvement in the distribution of capital, and restructure state-owned enterprises to allow further competition, potentially by attracting foreign and private sector players in industries that were previously highly regulated. This policy aimed to address the bloated state sector that had unduly profited from an earlier round of re-structuring by purchasing assets at below-market prices, assets that were no longer being used productively. However, by 2017, Xi's promise of economic reforms has been said to stall by experts. In 2015, the Chinese stock market bubble popped, which led Xi to use state forces to fix the issue.

Xi has increased state control over China's economy, voicing support for China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs), while also supporting the country's private sector. He has increased the role of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission at the expense of the State Council. His administration made it easier for banks to issue mortgages, increased foreign participation in the bond market, and increased country's currency renminbi's global role, helping it to join IMF's basket of special drawing right. In the 40th anniversary of the launching of Chinese economic reforms in 2018, he has promised to continue reforms but has warned that nobody "can dictate to the Chinese people". Xi has also personally made eradicating extreme poverty through " targeted poverty alleviation" a key goal. In 2021, Xi declared a "complete victory" over extreme poverty, saying that nearly 100 million people have been lifted out of poverty under his tenure, though some experts said that China's poverty threshold was relatively lower than the one set by the World Bank. In 2020, premier Li Keqiang, citing the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that China still had 600 million people living with less than 1000 yuan ($140) a month, although an article from The Economist said that the methodology NBS used was flawed, stating that the figure took the combined income, which was then equally divided.

China's economy has grown under Xi, with GDP in nominal terms more than doubling from $8.53 trillion in 2012 to $17.73 trillion in 2021, though the rate of growth has slowed from 7.9% in 2012 to 6% in 2019. Xi has stressed the importance of "high-quality growth" rather than "inflated growth". Xi has circulated a policy called " dual circulation", meaning reorienting the economy towards domestic consumption while remaining open to foreign trade and investment. Xi has also made boosting productivity in the economy a priority. Xi has attempted to reform the property sector to combat the steep increase in the property prices and to cut Chinese economy's dependence on the real estate sector. In the 19th CCP National Congress, Xi declared "Houses are built to be inhabited, not for speculation". In 2020, Xi's government formulated the " three red lines" policy that aimed to deleverage the heavily indebted property sector. Xi additionally has supported a property tax, for which he has faced resistance from members of the CCP.

Xi's administration has promoted " Made in China 2025" plan that aims to make China self-reliant in key technologies, although publicly China de-emphasised this plan due to the outbreak of a trade war with the U.S. Since the outbreak of the trade war in 2018, Xi has revived calls for "self-reliance", especially on the matters of technology. Xi's government has additionally allocated more than $100 billion to support China's efforts at semiconductor independence. The Chinese government has also supported technology companies like Huawei through grants, tax breaks, credit facilities and other forms of assistance, enabling their rise but also leading to countermeasures by the U.S.

Common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism and a key feature of Chinese-style modernization. The common prosperity we are pursuing is for all, affluence both in material and spiritual life, but not for a small portion nor for uniform egalitarianism.

- Xi Jinping during a speech in 2021

In November 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that Xi personally ordered a halt to Ant Group's initial public offering (IPO), in reaction to its founder Jack Ma criticizing government regulation in finance. Since 2021, Xi has promoted the term " common prosperity", a term which he defined as an "essential requirement of socialism". He described common prosperity as affluence for all, rather than the few, while also saying it's not egalitarianism. Common prosperity has been used as the justification for large-scale crackdowns and regulations towards the perceived "excesses" of several sectors, most prominently tech and tutoring industries. The examples of actions taken against tech companies have included fining large tech companies and passing of laws such as the Data Security Law. China also banned private tutoring companies from making profits and teaching school syllabus during weekends and holidays, effectively destroying the whole industry. Xi additionally opened a new stock exchange in Beijing targeted for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which was another part of his common prosperity campaign. There have also been other numerous cultural regulations, such as limiting video game usage by minors to 90 minutes during weekdays and 3 hours during weekends, complete banning of cryptocurrency, cracking down on idol worship, fandom and celebrity culture and cracking down on " sissy men".

Agenda announcement

In November 2013, at the conclusion of the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee, the Communist Party delivered a far-reaching reform agenda that alluded to changes in both economic and social policy. Xi signaled at the plenum that he was consolidating control of the massive internal security organization that was formerly the domain of Zhou Yongkang. A new National Security Commission was formed with Xi at its helm. The Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms-another ad hoc policy coordination body led by Xi upgraded to a commission in 2018-was also formed to oversee the implementation of the reform agenda. Termed "comprehensive deepening reforms" (全面深化改革; quánmiàn shēnhuà gǎigé ), they were said to be the most significant since Deng Xiaoping's 1992 Southern Tour. The plenum also announced economic reforms and resolved to abolish the system of " re-education through labour", which was largely seen as a blot on China's human rights record. The system has faced significant criticism for years from domestic critics and foreign observers. In January 2016, a two-child policy replaced the one-child policy, which was in turn was replaced with a three-child policy in May 2021. In July 2021, all family size limits as well as penalties for exceeding them were removed.

Legal reforms

The party under Xi announced a raft of legal reforms at the Fourth Plenum held in the fall 2014, and he called for " Chinese socialistic rule of law" immediately afterwards. The party aimed to reform the legal system, which had been perceived as ineffective at delivering justice and affected by corruption, local government interference and lack of constitutional oversight. The plenum, while emphasizing the absolute leadership of the party, also called for a greater role of the constitution in the affairs of state and a strengthening of the role of the National People's Congress Standing Committee in interpreting the constitution. It also called for more transparency in legal proceedings, more involvement of ordinary citizens in the legislative process, and an overall "professionalization" of the legal workforce. The party also planned to institute cross-jurisdictional circuit legal tribunals as well as giving provinces consolidated administrative oversight over lower level legal resources, which is intended to reduce local government involvement in legal proceedings.

Military reforms

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has undertaken an overhaul of the People's Liberation Army. Military-civil fusion has advanced under Xi. Xi has been active in his participation in military affairs, taking a direct hands-on approach to military reform. In addition to being the Chairman of the CMC and leader of the Central Leading Group for Military Reform founded in 2014 to oversee comprehensive military reforms, Xi has delivered numerous high-profile pronouncements vowing to clean up malfeasance and complacency in the military. Xi has repeatedly warned that the depoliticization of the PLA from the CCP would lead to a collapse similar to that of the Soviet Union. Xi held the New Gutian Conference in 2014, gathering China's top military officers, re-emphasizing the principle of "the party has absolute control over the army" first established by Mao at the 1929 Gutian Conference.

In the USSR, where the military was depoliticized, separated from the party and nationalized, the party was disarmed. When the Soviet Union came to crisis point, a big party was gone just like that. Proportionally, the Soviet Communist Party had more members than we do, but nobody was man enough to stand up and resist.

Xi announced a reduction of 300,000 troops from the PLA in 2015, bringing its size to 2 million troops. Xi described this as a gesture of peace, while analysts such as Rory Medcalf have said that the cut was done to reduce costs as well as part of PLA's modernization. On 2016, he reduced the number of theater commands of the PLA from seven to five. He has also abolished the four autonomous general departments of the PLA, replacing them with 15 agencies directly reporting to the CMC. Two new branches of the PLA were created under his reforms, the Strategic Support Force and the Joint Logistics Support Force.

On 21 April 2016, Xi was named commander-in-chief of the country's new Joint Operations Command Center of the PLA by Xinhua News Agency and the broadcaster China Central Television. Some analysts interpreted this move as an attempt to display strength and strong leadership and as being more "political than military". According to Ni Lexiong, a military affairs expert, Xi "not only controls the military but also does it in an absolute manner, and that in wartime, he is ready to command personally". According to a University of California, San Diego expert on Chinese military, Xi "has been able to take political control of the military to an extent that exceeds what Mao and Deng have done".

Foreign policy

Xi has taken a harder line on security issues as well as foreign affairs, projecting a more nationalistic and assertive China on the world stage. His political program calls for a China more united and confident of its own value system and political structure. Foreign analysts and observers have frequently said that Xi's main foreign policy objective is to restore China's position on the global stage as a great power.

Addressing a regional conference in Shanghai on 21 May 2014, he called on Asian countries to unite and forge a way together, rather than get involved with third party powers, seen as a reference to the United States. "Matters in Asia ultimately must be taken care of by Asians. Asia's problems ultimately must be resolved by Asians and Asia's security ultimately must be protected by Asians", he told the conference.

Xi has promoted "major-country diplomacy" (大国外交), stating that China is already a "big power" and breaking away from previous Chinese leaders who had a more precautious diplomacy. He has adopted a hawkish foreign policy posture called " wolf warrior diplomacy", while his foreign policy thoughts are collectively known as " Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy". In March 2021, he said that "the East is rising and the West is declining" (东升西降), saying that the power of the Western world was in decline and their COVID-19 response was an example of this, and that China was entering a period of opportunity because of this. In 2022, Xi proposed a "global security initiative" (全球安全倡议) that upheld the term " indivisible security", a term also supported by Russia. Xi has frequently alluded to " community with a shared future for mankind", which Chinese diplomats have said doesn't imply an intention to change the international order, but which foreign observers say China wants a new order that puts it more at the centre. Under Xi, China has, along with Russia, also focused on increasing relations with the Global South in order to blunt the effect of Western sanctions.

Xi has put an emphasis on increasing China's "international discourse power" (国际话语权) to create a more favorable global opinion of China in the world. In this pursuit, Xi has emphasised the need to "tell China's story well" (讲好中国故事), meaning expanding China's external propaganda (外宣) and communications. Xi has expanded the focus and scope of the United Front, which aims to consolidate support for CCP in non-CCP elements both inside and outside China, and has accordingly expanded the United Front Work Department.

Under Xi, China has cut back lending to Africa after fears that African countries couldn't repay their debts to China. Xi has also promised that China would write off debts of some African countries. In November 2021, Xi promised African nations 1 billion doses of China's COVID-19 vaccines, which was in addition to the 200 million already supplied before. This has been said to be part of China's vaccine diplomacy.

European Union

China's efforts under Xi has been for the European Union (EU) to stay in a neutral position in their contest with the U.S. China and the EU announced the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) in 2020, although the deal was later frozen due to mutual sanctions over Xinjiang. Xi has supported calls for EU to achieve " strategic autonomy", and has also called on the EU to view China "independently".

Relations between China and India had ups and downs under Xi, later deteriorating due to various factors. In 2013, the two countries had a standoff in Depsang for three weeks, which ended with no border change. In 2017, the two countries again had a standoff over a Chinese construction of a road in Doklam, a territory both claimed by Bhutan, India's ally, and China, though by 28 August, both countries mutually disengaged. The most serious crisis in the relationship came when the two countries had a deadly clash in 2020 at the Line of Actual Control, leaving some soldiers dead. The clashes created a serious deterioration in relations, with China seizing a small chunk of territory that India controlled.

China-Japan relations have initially soured under Xi's administration; the most thorny issue between the two countries remains the dispute over the Senkaku islands, which China calls Diaoyu. In response to Japan's continued robust stance on the issue, China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone in November 2013. However, the relations later started to improve, with Xi being invited to visit in 2020, though the trip was later delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In August 2022, Kyodo News reported that Xi personally decided to let ballistic missiles to land within Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) during the military exercises held around Taiwan, to send a warning to Japan.

Middle East

While China has historically been wary of getting closer to the Middle East countries, Xi has changed this approach. China has grown closer to both Iran and Saudi Arabia under Xi. During a visit to Iran in 2016, Xi proposed a large cooperation program with Iran, a deal that was later signed in 2021. China has also sold ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia and is helping build 7,000 schools in Iraq. In 2013, Xi proposed a peace deal between Israel and Palestine that entails a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. Turkey, with whom relations were long strained over Uyghurs, has also grown closer to China.

North Korea

Under Xi, China has initially taken a more critical stance on North Korea due to its nuclear tests. However, starting in 2018, the relations started to improve due to meetings between Xi and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Xi has also supported denuclearization of North Korea, and has voiced support for economic reforms in the country. At the G20 meeting in Japan, Xi called for a "timely easing" of sanctions imposed on North Korea.

Xi has cultivated stronger relations with Russia, particularly in the wake of the Ukraine crisis of 2014. He seems to have developed a strong personal relationship with president Vladimir Putin. Both are viewed as strong leaders with a nationalist orientation who are not afraid to assert themselves against Western interests. Xi attended the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Under Xi, China signed a $400 billion gas deal with Russia; China has also become Russia's largest trading partner.

Xi and Putin met on 4 February 2022 during the run up to the 2022 Beijing Olympics during the massive Russian build-up of force on the Ukrainian border, with the two expressing that the two countries are nearly united in their anti-US alignment and that both nations shared "no limits" to their commitments. U.S. officials said that China had asked Russia to wait for the invasion of Ukraine until after the Beijing Olympics ended on 20 February. In April 2022, Xi Jinping expressed opposition to sanctions against Russia. On 15 June 2022, Xi Jinping reasserted China's support for Russia on issues of sovereignty and security. However, Xi also said China is committed to respecting "the territorial integrity of all countries", and said China was "pained to see the flames of war reignited in Europe". China has additionally kept a distance from Russia's actions, instead putting itself as a neutral party.

South Korea

Xi has initially improved relationships with South Korea. Starting in 2017, China's relationship with South Korea soured over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD), a missile defence system, purchase of the latter. which China sees as a threat but which South Korea says is a defence measure against North Korea. Ultimately, South Korea halted the purchase of the THAAD after China imposed unofficial sanctions. China's relations with South Korea improved again under president Moon Jae-in.

Southeast Asia

Since Xi came to power, China has been rapidly building and militarizing islands in the South China Sea, a decision Study Times of the Central Party School said was personally taken by Xi. In April 2015, new satellite imagery revealed that China was rapidly constructing an airfield on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea. In May 2015, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter warned the government of Xi to halt its rapid island-building in disputed territory in the South China Sea. In November 2014, in a major policy address, Xi called for a decrease in the use of force, preferring dialogue and consultation to solve the current issues plaguing the relationship between China and its South East Asian neighbors.

United States

Xi has called China-United States relations in the contemporary world a "new type of great-power relations", a phrase the Obama administration had been reluctant to embrace. Under his administration the Strategic and Economic Dialogue that began under Hu Jintao has continued. On China-U.S. relations, Xi said, "If [China and the United States] are in confrontation, it would surely spell disaster for both countries". The U.S. has been critical of Chinese actions in the South China Sea. In 2014, Chinese hackers compromised the computer system of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, resulting in the theft of approximately 22 million personnel records handled by the office.

Xi has also indirectly spoken out critically on the U.S. "strategic pivot" to Asia. Relations with the U.S. soured after Donald Trump became president in 2017. Since 2018, U.S. and China have been engaged in an escalating trade war. In 2020, the relations further deteriorated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Xi has called the U.S. the biggest threat to China's development, saying that "the biggest source of chaos in the present-day world is the United States". Xi has also scrapped a previous policy in which China didn't challenge the U.S. in most instances, while Chinese officials said that they now see China as an "equal" to the U.S.

Foreign trips as paramount leader

Xi made his first foreign trip as China's paramount leader to Russia on 22 March 2013, about a week after he assumed the presidency. He met with President Vladimir Putin and the two leaders discussed trade and energy issues. He then went on to Tanzania, South Africa (where he attended the BRICS summit in Durban), and the Republic of the Congo. Xi visited the United States at Sunnylands Estate in California in a 'shirtsleeves summit' with U.S. President Barack Obama in June 2013, although this was not considered a formal state visit. In October 2013, Xi attended the APEC Summit in Bali, Indonesia.

In March 2014, Xi made a trip to Western Europe visiting the Netherlands, where he attended the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, followed by visits to France, Germany and Belgium. He made a state visit to South Korea on 4 July 2014 and met with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Between 14 and 23 July, Xi attended the BRICS leaders' summit in Brazil and visited Argentina, Venezuela, and Cuba.

Xi went on an official state visit to India and met with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in September 2014; he visited New Delhi and also went to Modi's hometown in the state of Gujarat. He went on a state visit to Australia and met with Prime Minister Tony Abbott in November 2014, followed by a visit to the island nation of Fiji. Xi visited Pakistan in April 2015, signing a series of infrastructure deals worth $45 billion related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. During his visit, Pakistan's highest civilian award, the Nishan-e-Pakistan, was conferred upon him. He then headed to Jakarta and Bandung, Indonesia, to attend the Afro-Asian Leaders Summit and the 60th Anniversary events of the Bandung Conference. Xi visited Russia and was the guest-of-honour of Russian president Vladimir Putin at the 2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade to mark the 70th Anniversary of the victory of the allies in Europe. At the parade, Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan sat next to Putin. On the same trip Xi also visited Kazakhstan and met with that country's president Nursultan Nazarbayev, and also met Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus.

In September 2015, Xi made his first state visit to the United States. In October 2015, he made a state visit to the United Kingdom, the first by a Chinese leader in a decade. This followed a visit to China in March 2015 by the Duke of Cambridge. During the state visit, Xi met Queen Elizabeth II, British prime minister David Cameron and other dignitaries. Increased customs, trade, and research collaborations between China and the U.K. were discussed, but more informal events also took place including a visit to Manchester City's football academy.

In March 2016, Xi visited the Czech Republic on his way to the United States. In Prague, he met with the Czech president, prime minister and other representatives to promote relations and economic cooperation between the Czech Republic and the PRC. His visit was met by a considerable number of protests by Czechs.

In January 2017, Xi became the first Chinese paramount leader to plan to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos. On 17 January, Xi addressed the forum in a high-profile keynote, addressing globalization, the global trade agenda, and China's rising place in the world's economy and international governance; he made a series of pledges about China's defense of "economic globalization" and climate change accords. Premier Li Keqiang attended the forum in 2015 and Vice-president Li Yuanchao did so in 2016. During the three-day state visit to the country in 2017 Xi also visited the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee.

On 20 June 2019, Xi visited Pyongyang, becoming the first Chinese leader to visit North Korea since his predecessor Hu Jintao's visit in 2004. On 27 June, he attended the G20 summit in Osaka. On 17 January 2020, Xi visited Myanmar, meeting president Win Myint, state councillor Aung San Suu Kyi and military leader Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw.

Between 2020 and 2022, Xi paused foreign travel, speculated to be due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 14 February 2022, Xi visited Astana, Kazakhstan, his first trip overseas since the start of the pandemic, meeting president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. A day later, he visited Uzbekistan to attend the 2022 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. There he met with Central Asian leaders as well as Russian president Vladimir Putin, his first since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was unveiled by Xi in September and October 2013 during visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia, and was thereafter promoted by Premier Li Keqiang during state visits to Asia and Europe. Xi made the announcement for the initiative while in Astana, Kazakhstan, and called it a "golden opportunity". BRI has been called Xi's "signature project", involving numerous infrastructure development and investment projects throughout Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. BRI was added to the CCP Constitution at the closing session of the 19th Party Congress on 24 October 2017, further elevating its importance. Since the BRI was launched, China became the world's largest lender, lending about $1 trillion dollars in a decade to almost 150 countries. However, by 2022, many BRI projects have stalled, and most of China's debt became held by countries in financial distress, leading the Chinese leaders to adopt a more conservative approach to BRI, dubbed as "Belt and Road Initiative 2.0".

National security

Xi has devoted a large amount of work towards national security, calling for a "holistic national security architecture" that encompasses "all aspects of the work of the party and the country". During a private talk with U.S. president Obama and vice president Biden, he said that China had been a target of " colour revolutions", foreshadowing his focus on national security. Since its creation by Xi, the National Security Commission has established local security committees, focusing on dissent. In the name of national security, Xi's government has passed numerous laws including a counterespionage law in 2014, national security and a counterterrorism law in 2015, a cybersecurity law and a law restricting foreign NGOs in 2016, a national intelligence law in 2017, and a data security law in 2021. Under Xi, China's mass surveillance network has dramatically grown, with comprehensive profiles being built for each citizen.

Human rights

According to the Human Rights Watch, Xi has "started a broad and sustained offensive on human rights" since he became leader in 2012. The HRW also said that repression in China is "at its worst level since the Tiananmen Square massacre." Since taking power, Xi has cracked down on grassroots activism, with hundreds being detained. He presided over the 709 crackdown on 9 July 2015, which saw more than 200 lawyers, legal assistants and human rights activists being detained. His term has seen the arrest and imprisonment of activists such as Xu Zhiyong, as well as numerous others who identified with the New Citizens' Movement. Prominent legal activist Pu Zhiqiang of the Weiquan movement was also arrested and detained.

In 2017, the local government of the Jiangxi province told Christians to replace their pictures of Jesus with Xi Jinping as part of a general campaign on unofficial churches in the country. According to local social media, officials "transformed them from believing in religion to believing in the party". According to activists, "Xi is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982", and according to pastors and a group that monitors religion in China, has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith".

Following several terrorist attacks in Xinjiang in 2013 and 2014, Xi launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism in 2014, which involved mass detention, and surveillance of ethnic Uyghurs there. Xi made an inspection tour in Xinjiang between 27 and 30 April in 2014. As of 2020, China is holding 1.8 million people, mostly Uyghurs but also including other ethnic and religious minorities, in internment camps in Xinjiang. Various human rights groups and former inmates have described the camps as "concentration camps", where Uyghurs and other minorities have been forcibly assimilated into China's majority ethnic Han society. Internal Chinese government documents leaked to the press in November 2019 showed that Xi personally ordered a security crackdown in Xinjiang, saying that the party must show "absolutely no mercy" and that officials use all the "weapons of the people's democratic dictatorship" to suppress those "infected with the virus of extremism". The documents also showed that Xi repeatedly discussed about Islamic extremism in his speeches, likening it to a "virus" or a "drug" that could be only addressed by "a period of painful, interventionary treatment." However, he also warned against the discrimination against Uyghurs and rejected proposals to eradicate Islam in China, calling that kind of viewpoint "biased, even wrong". Additionally, Xi's exact role in the building of internment camps has not been publicly reported, though he's widely believed to be behind them and his words have been the source for major justifications in the crackdown in Xinjiang. In the Xinjiang Police Files leaked in 2022, a document quoting Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi suggested that Xi had been aware of the internment camps.

COVID-19 pandemic

On 20 January 2020, Xi commented for the first time on the emerging COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, saying that ordering "efforts to curb the spread" of the virus. He gave premier Li Keqiang some responsibility over the COVID-19 response, in what has been suggested by The Wall Street Journal was an attempt to potentially insulate himself from criticism if the response failed. The government initially responded to the pandemic with a lockdown and censorship, with the initial response causing widespread backlash within China. He met with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), on 28 January. Der Spiegel reported that in January 2020 Xi pressured Tedros Adhanom to hold off on issuing a global warning about the outbreak of COVID-19 and hold back information on human-to-human transmission of the virus, allegations denied by the WHO.

On 5 February, Xi met with Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen in Beijing, the first foreign leader allowed into China since the outbreak. After the COVID-19 outbreak got under control in Wuhan, Xi visited the city on 10 March. Since then, Xi has favoured what has officially been termed "dynamic zero-COVID policy" that aims to control and suppress the virus as much as possible within the country's borders. This has involved local lockdowns and mass-testing. While initially credited for China's suppression of the COVID-19 outbreak, the policy was later criticized by foreign and some domestic observers for being out of touch with the rest of the world and taking a heavy toll on the economy. This approach has especially come under criticism during a 2022 lockdown on Shanghai, which forced millions to their homes and damaged the city's economy, denting the image of Li Qiang, close Xi ally and Party secretary of the city. Conversely, Xi has said that the policy was designed to protect people's life safety. On 23 July 2022, the National Health Commission reported that Xi and other top leaders have taken the local COVID-19 vaccines. At the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi confirmed the continuation of the zero-COVID policy.

Environmental policy

In September 2020, Xi announced that China will "strengthen its 2030 climate target (NDC), peak emissions before 2030 and aim to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060". If accomplished, this would lower the expected rise in global temperature by 0.2-0.3 °C - "the biggest single reduction ever estimated by the Climate Action Tracker". Xi mentioned the link between the COVID-19 pandemic and nature destruction as one of the reasons for the decision, saying that "Humankind can no longer afford to ignore the repeated warnings of nature." On 27 September, Chinese scientists presented a detailed plan how to achieve the target. In September 2021, Xi announced that China will not build "coal-fired power projects abroad, which was said to be potentially "pivotal" in reducing emissions. The Belt and Road Initiative did not include financing such projects already in the first half of 2021.

Xi Jinping did not attend COP26 personally. However, a Chinese delegation led by climate change envoy Xie Zhenhua did attend. During the conference, the United States and China agreed on a framework to reduce GHG emission by co-operating on different measures.

Governance style

Known as a very secretive leader, little is known publicly about how Xi makes political decisions, or how he came to power. Xi's speeches generally get released months or years after they are made. Xi has also never given a press conference since becoming paramount leader, except in rare joint press conferences with foreign leaders. The Wall Street Journal reported that Xi prefers micromanaging in governance, in contrast to previous leaders such as Hu Jintao who left details of major policies to lower-ranking officials. Reportedly, ministerial officials try to get Xi's attention in various ways, with some creating slide shows and audio reports. The Wall Street Journal also reported that Xi created a performance-review system in 2018 to give evaluations on officials on various measures, including loyalty. According to The Economist, Xi's orders have generally been vague, leaving lower level officials to interpret his words. Chinese state media Xinhua News Agency said that Xi "personally reviews every draft of major policy documents" and "all reports submitted to him, no matter how late in the evening, were returned with instructions the following morning". Xi called for officials to practise self-criticism which, according to observers, is in order to appear less corrupt and more popular among the people.

Political positions

Chinese Dream

Xi and CCP ideologues coined the phrase "Chinese Dream" to describe his overarching plans for China as its leader. Xi first used the phrase during a high-profile visit to the National Museum of China on 29 November 2012, where he and his Standing Committee colleagues were attending a "national revival" exhibition. Since then, the phrase has become the signature political slogan of the Xi era. The origin of the term "Chinese Dream" is unclear. While the phrase has been used before by journalists and scholars, some publications have posited the term likely drew its inspiration from the concept of the American Dream. The Economist noted the abstract and seemingly accessible nature of the concept with no specific overarching policy stipulations may be a deliberate departure from the jargon-heavy ideologies of his predecessors. Xi has linked the "Chinese Dream" with the phrase "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

Cultural revival

In recent years, top political leaders of the CCP such as Xi have overseen the rehabilitation of ancient Chinese philosophical figures like Han Fei into the mainstream of Chinese thought alongside Confucianism. At a meeting with other officials in 2013, he quoted Confucius, saying "he who rules by virtue is like the Pole Star, it maintains its place, and the multitude of stars pay homage." While visiting Shandong, the birthplace of Confucius, in November, he told scholars that the Western world was "suffering a crisis of confidence" and that the CCP has been "the loyal inheritor and promoter of China's outstanding traditional culture."

According to several analysts, Xi's leadership has been characterised by a resurgence of the ancient political philosophy Legalism. Han Fei gained new prominence with favourable citations; one sentence of Han Fei's that Xi quoted appeared thousands of times in official Chinese media at the local, provincial, and national levels. Xi has additionally supported the Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming, telling local leaders to promote him.

Xi has also overseen a revival of traditional Chinese culture, breaking apart from CCP's path, which had often attacked it. He has called traditional culture the "soul" of the nation and the "foundation" of the CCP's culture. Hanfu, the traditional dress of Han Chinese, has seen a revival under him, associated with the revival of traditional culture.

Xi has said that "only socialism can save China". Xi has also declared socialism with Chinese characteristics to be the "only correct path to realize national rejuvenation". According to BBC News, while the CCP was perceived to have abandoned its communist ideology since it initiated economic reforms in the 1970s, Xi is believed by some observers to be more believing in the "idea of a communist project", being described as a Marxist-Leninist by former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd. Subscribing to the view that socialism will eventually triumph over capitalism, he has said "Marx and Engels's analysis of the basic contradictions of capitalist society is not outdated, nor is the historical materialist view that capitalism is bound to die out and socialism bound to win". Xi has overseen the increase of "Socialist Political Economy With Chinese Characteristics" as a major study topic for academics in China, aiming to decrease the influence of Western-influenced economics. Though he has called a stop to what he considers to be "disorderly expansion of capital", he has also said that "it is necessary to stimulate the vitality of capital of all types, including nonpublic capital, and give full play to its positive role".

China's success proves that socialism is not dead. It is thriving. Just imagine this: had socialism failed in China, had our communist party collapsed like the party in the Soviet Union, then global socialism would lapse into a long dark age. And communism, like Karl Marx once said, would be a haunting spectre lingering in limbo.

- Xi Jinping during a speech in 2018

Xi has supported greater CCP control over the PRC, saying "government, the military, society and schools, north, south, east and west - the party leads them all". During the 100th anniversary of the CCP in 2021, he said that "without the Communist Party of China, there would be no new China and no national rejuvenation", and that "the leadership of the Party is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and constitutes the greatest strength of this system". He has said that China, despite many setbacks, has achieved great progress under the CCP, saying that "socialism with Chinese characteristics has become the standard-bearer of 21st-century socialist development". However, he has also warned that it will take a long time for China under the CCP to complete its rejuvenation, and during this timeframe, party members must be vigilant to not let CCP rule collapse.

Xi has ruled out a multi-party system for China, saying that "constitutional monarchy, imperial restoration, parliamentarism, a multi-party system and a presidential system, we considered them, tried them, but none worked". However, Xi considers China to be a democracy, saying that "China's socialist democracy is the most comprehensive, genuine and effective democracy". China's definition of democracy is different from liberal democracies and is rooted in Marxism-Leninism, and is based on the phrases " people's democratic dictatorship" and " democratic centralism". Xi has additionally coined the term "whole-process people's democracy" (全过程人民民主) which he said was about having "the people as masters". However, foreign analysts and observers have widely disputed that China is a democracy, saying that it's a one-party authoritarian state and Xi an authoritarian leader. Some sources have called Xi a dictator, citing the large centralisation of power around him unseen compared to his predecessors.

Document Number Nine

Document No. 9, officially the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere, is a confidential internal document widely circulated within the CCP in 2013 by the party's General Office. It was published in July 2012. The document officially warns of promoting seven dangerous Western values:

Western Constitutional Democracy: an attempt to undermine the current leadership and the socialism with Chinese characteristics system of governance;

"Universal values" in an attempt to weaken the theoretical foundations of the Party's leadership;

Civil society in an attempt to dismantle the ruling party's social foundation;

Neoliberalism, attempting to change China's Basic Economic System;

West's idea of journalism, challenging China's principle that the media and publishing system should be subject to Party discipline;

Historical nihilism, trying to undermine the history of the CCP and of New China; and

Questioning Reform and Opening and the socialist nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Although it predates Xi Jinping's formal rise to the top party and state posts, the release of this internal document, which has introduced new topics that were previously not "off-limits", was being closely associated with Xi Jinping by The New York Times.

Xi Jinping Thought

In September 2017, the CCP Central Committee decided that Xi's political philosophies, generally referred to as "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era", would become part of the Party Constitution. Xi first made mention of the "Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" in his opening day speech delivered to the 19th Party Congress in October 2017. His Politburo Standing Committee colleagues, in their own reviews of Xi's keynote address at the Congress, prepended the name "Xi Jinping" in front of "Thought". On 24 October 2017, at its closing session, the 19th Party Congress approved the incorporation of Xi Jinping Thought into the Constitution of the CCP, while in March 2018, the National People's Congress changed the state constitution to include Xi Jinping Thought.

Xi himself has described the Thought as part of the broad framework created around Socialism with Chinese characteristics, a term coined by Deng Xiaoping that places China in the primary stage of socialism. In official party documentation and pronouncements by Xi's colleagues, the Thought is said to be a continuation of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development, as part of a series of guiding ideologies that embody "Marxism adopted to Chinese conditions" and contemporary considerations. It has additionally been described as the "21st century Marxism" by two professors in the Central Party School of the CCP. Wang Huning, a top political adviser and a close ally of Xi, has been described as pivotal to developing Xi Jinping Thought. The concepts and context behind Xi Jinping Thought are elaborated in Xi's The Governance of China book series, published by the Foreign Languages Press for an international audience. Volume one was published in September 2014, followed by volume two in November 2017.

An app for teaching Xi Jinping Thought had become the most popular smartphone app in China in 2019, as the country's ruling CCP launched a new campaign that calls on its cadres to immerse themselves in the political doctrine every day. Xuexi Qiangguo is now the most downloaded item on Apple's domestic App Store, surpassing in demand social media apps such as WeChat and TikTok. In 2021, the government included Xi Jinping Thought in the curriculum including to students from primary schools to university, which created pushback from parents. For much of the preceding 30 years, political ideology and communist doctrine were not a standard taught in Chinese schools until middle school, and textbooks featured a wider set of Chinese leaders with less emphasis on a single leader like Xi.

Xi has supported and pursued a greater economic integration of Hong Kong to mainland China through projects such as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. He has pushed for the Greater Bay Area project, which aims to integrate Hong Kong, Macau, and nine other cities in Guangdong. Xi's push for greater integration has created fears of decreasing freedoms in Hong Kong. Xi has supported the Hong Kong Government and chief executive Carrie Lam against the protesters in the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests. He has defended the Hong Kong police's use of force, saying that "We sternly support the Hong Kong police to take forceful actions in enforcing the law, and the Hong Kong judiciary to punish in accordance with the law those who have committed violent crimes." While visiting Macau on 20 December 2019 as part of the 20th anniversary of its return to China, Xi warned of foreign forces interfering in Hong Kong and Macau, while also hinting that Macau could be a model for Hong Kong to follow.

In 2020, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) passed a national security law in Hong Kong that dramatically expanded government clampdown over the opposition in the city. This was seem as the culmination of a long-term project under Xi to further closely integrate Hong Kong with the mainland. Xi visited Hong Kong as president in 2017 and 2022, in the 20th and 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong respectively. In his 2022 visit, he swore in John Lee as chief executive, a former police officer that was backed by the Chinese government to expand control over the city. While in the city, he said Hong Kong had moved from "chaos" to "stability". Since John Lee became chief executive, Hong Kong government officials including Lee himself have shown public displays of loyalty towards Xi, similar to the mainland but previously unheard in the city.

In 2015, Xi met with Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou, which marked the first time the political leaders of both sides of the Taiwan Strait have met since the end of the Chinese Civil War in Mainland China in 1950. Xi said that China and Taiwan are " one family" that cannot be pulled apart. However, the relations started deteriorating after Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won the presidential elections in 2016.

In the 19th Party Congress held in 2017, Xi reaffirmed six of the nine principles that had been affirmed continuously since the 16th Party Congress in 2002, with the notable exception of "Placing hopes on the Taiwan people as a force to help bring about unification". According to the Brookings Institution, Xi used stronger language on potential Taiwan independence than his predecessors towards previous DPP governments in Taiwan. He said that "we will never allow any person, any organisation, or any political party to split any part of the Chinese territory from China at any time at any form." In March 2018, Xi said that Taiwan would face the "punishment of history" for any attempts at separatism.

In January 2019, Xi Jinping called on Taiwan to reject its formal independence from China, saying: "We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means." Those options, he said, could be used against "external interference". Xi also said that they "are willing to create broad space for peaceful reunification, but will leave no room for any form of separatist activities." President Tsai responded to the speech by saying Taiwan would not accept a one country, two systems arrangement with the mainland, while stressing the need for all cross-strait negotiations to be on a government-to-government basis.

In 2022, after the Chinese military exercises around Taiwan, the PRC published a white paper called " The Taiwan Question and China's Reunification in the New Era", which was the first white paper regards to Taiwan since 2000. The paper urged Taiwan to become a special administrative region of the PRC under the one country two systems formula, and said that "a small number of countries, the U.S. foremost amongst them" are "using Taiwan to contain China". Notably, the new white paper excluded a part that previously said the PRC would not send troops or officials to Taiwan after unification.

Personal life

Xi's first marriage was to Ke Lingling, the daughter of Ke Hua, China's ambassador to the United Kingdom in the early 1980s. They divorced within a few years. The two were said to fight "almost every day", and after the divorce Ke moved to England. In 1987, Xi married the prominent Chinese folk singer Peng Liyuan. Xi and Peng were introduced by friends as many Chinese couples were in the 1980s. Xi was reputedly academic during their courtship, inquiring about singing techniques. Peng Liyuan, a household name in China, was better known to the public than Xi until his political elevation. The couple frequently lived apart due largely to their separate professional lives. Peng has played a much more visible role as China's "first lady" compared to her predecessors; for example, Peng hosted 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.

In June 2012, Bloomberg News reported that members of Xi's extended family have substantial business interests, although there was no evidence he had intervened to assist them. The Bloomberg website was blocked in mainland China in response to the article. Since Xi embarked on an anti-corruption campaign, The New York Times reported members of his family were selling their corporate and real estate investments beginning in 2012. Relatives of highly placed Chinese officials, including seven current and former senior leaders of the Politburo of the CCP, have been named in the Panama Papers, including Deng Jiagui, Xi's brother-in-law. Deng had two shell companies in the British Virgin Islands while Xi was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, but they were dormant by the time Xi became general secretary of the CCP in November 2012.

Personality

Peng described Xi as hardworking and down-to-earth: "When he comes home, I've never felt as if there's some leader in the house. In my eyes, he's just my husband." Xi was described in a 2011 Washington Post article by those who know him as "pragmatic, serious, cautious, hard-working, down to earth and low-key". He was described as a good hand at problem solving and "seemingly uninterested in the trappings of high office".

Public image

It is hard to gauge the opinion of the Chinese public on Xi, as no independent surveys exist in China and social media is heavily censored. However, he is believed to be widely popular in the country. According to a 2014 poll co-sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Xi ranked 9 out of 10 in domestic approval ratings. A YouGov poll released in July 2019 found that about 22% of people in mainland China list Xi as the person they admire the most, a plurality, although this figure was less than 5% for residents of Hong Kong. In the spring of 2019, the Pew Research Center made a survey on confidence on Xi Jinping among six-country medians based on Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines and South Korea. The survey indicated that a median 29% have confidence in Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs, meanwhile a median of 45% have no confidence. These numbers are slightly higher than those of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (23% confidence, 53% no confidence). A poll by Politico and Morning Consult in 2021 found that 5% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Xi, 38% unfavorable, 17% no opinion and 40%, a plurality, never hearing of him.

In 2017, The Economist named him the most powerful person in the world. In 2018, ranked him as the most powerful and influential person in the world, replacing Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been ranked so for five consecutive years. In 2016 and 2021, Reporters Without Borders, an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information, included Xi among the list of press freedom predators.

Unlike previous Chinese leaders, Chinese state media has given a more encompassing view of Xi's private life, although still strictly controlled. According to Xinhua News Agency, Xi would swim one kilometre and walk every day as long as there was time, and is interested in foreign writers, especially Russian. He is known to love films and TV shows such as Saving Private Ryan, The Departed, The Godfather and Game of Thrones, also praising the independent film-maker Jia Zhangke. The Chinese state media has also cast him as a fatherly figure and a man of the people, determined to stand up for Chinese interests.

Decoration

Country/Organisation

Date

Note

Grand Cross Medal of Honor

21 November 2016

Medal of Peru

[451]

Order of Friendship

15 September 2022

State award of Uzbekistan

[460]

Key to the City

References

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Xi Jinping ( SHEE jin-PING ; Chinese: 习近平; pinyin: ; [ɕǐ tɕîn pʰǐŋ]; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been serving as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, and president of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013.

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Kuwait: Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah

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Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, GCB (Hon), GCMG (Hon) (29 June 1926 - 15 January 2006) ( Arabic: الشيخ جابر الأحمد الجابر الصباح‎) of the al-Sabah dynasty, was the Emir of Kuwait and Commander of the Military of Kuwait; serving from 31 December 1977 until his death on 15 January 2006 due to cerebral hemorrhage.

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In Kuwait, the government type is hereditary monarchy is a form of government and succession of power in which the throne passes from one member of a royal family to another member of the same family. It represents an institutionalized form of nepotism.

In China, The People's Republic of China is a socialist country under the leadership of the working class and under the people's democratic dictatorship based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The government type is the system of people's Congresses. This is a system of people's representatives meeting to decide on national laws.

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Kuwait is located in the Middle East, so it is a tropical desert climate.

China is located in Central Asia and has a vast territory. It has subtropical monsoon climate, temperate monsoon climate and tropical monsoon climate.

There is no river or lake in Kuwait. The source of fresh water is mainly from desalination.

There are many rivers in China, and the longest river is the Yangtze River.

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Kuwait: Islam is the national religion, 95% of the residents believe in Islam, of which about 70% belong to Sunnis and 30% are Shiites. Islam plays an important role in the political and social life of Kuwait. More than 1000 mosques throughout the country. Religious education is an important aspect of national education. Every school has religious courses.

China is a multi religious country. The mainland of China officially practices Atheism Propaganda and education. Chinese religious believers mainly believe in Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Christianity. Chinese citizens can freely choose and express their beliefs and religious identities. At the same time, China is also one of the countries where religion is developing vigorously in the world. Among them, Buddhism, Protestantism and Taoism have the largest number of followers in China. Religious culture in China has the doctrine of "Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism". On the basis of ancestor worship, the general Chinese people are influenced by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, which are called Chinese folk beliefs. There are mainly Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and so on.

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Islamism (also often called political Islam) is a religio-political ideology. The advocates of Islamism, also known as "al-Islamiyyun", are dedicated to realizing their ideological interpretation of Islam within the context of the state or society. The majority of them are affiliated with Islamic institutions or social mobilization movements, often designated as "al-harakat al-Islamiyyah." Islamists emphasize the implementation of , pan-Islamic political unity, the creation of Islamic states, (eventually unified), and rejection of non-Muslim influences-particularly Western or universal economic, military, political, social, or cultural.

In its original formulation, Islamism described an ideology seeking to revive Islam to its past assertiveness and glory, purifying it of foreign elements, reasserting its role into "social and political as well as personal life"; and in particular "reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam" (i.e. Sharia). According to at least one observer (author Robin Wright), Islamist movements have "arguably altered the Middle East more than any trend since the modern states gained independence", redefining "politics and even borders".

Central and prominent figures in 20th-century Islamism include Sayyid Rashid Riḍā, Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi, Ruhollah Khomeini (founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Hassan Al-Turabi. Syrian Sunni cleric Muhammad Rashid Riḍā, a fervent opponent of Westernization, Zionism and nationalism, advocated Sunni internationalism through revolutionary restoration of a pan-Islamic Caliphate to politically unite the Muslim World. Riḍā was a strong exponent of Islamic vanguardism, the belief that Muslim community should be guided by clerical elites () who steered the efforts for religious education and Islamic revival. Riḍā's Salafi- Arabist synthesis and Islamist ideals greatly influenced his disciples like Hasan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and Hajji Amin al-Husayni, the anti-Zionist Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Al-Banna and Maududi called for a " reformist" strategy to re-Islamizing society through grassroots social and political activism. Other Islamists (Al-Turabi) are proponents of a " revolutionary" strategy of Islamizing society through exercise of state power, or ( Sayyid Qutb) for combining grassroots Islamization with armed revolution. The term has been applied to non-state reform movements, political parties, militias and revolutionary groups.

At least one author ( Graham E. Fuller) has argued for a broader notion of Islamism as a form of identity politics, involving "support for [Muslim] identity, authenticity, broader regionalism, revivalism, [and] revitalization of the community." Islamists themselves prefer terms such as "Islamic movement", or "Islamic activism" to "Islamism", objecting to the insinuation that Islamism is anything other than Islam renewed and revived. In public and academic contexts, the term "Islamism" has been criticized as having been given connotations of violence, extremism, and violations of human rights, by the Western mass media, leading to Islamophobia and stereotyping.

Following the Arab Spring, many post-Islamist currents became heavily involved in democratic politics, while others spawned "the most aggressive and ambitious Islamist militia" to date, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Originally the term Islamism was simply used to mean the religion of Islam, not an ideology or movement. It first appeared in the English language as Islamismus in 1696, and as Islamism in 1712. The term appears in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in In Re Ross (1891). By the turn of the twentieth century the shorter and purely Arabic term "Islam" had begun to displace it, and by 1938, when Orientalist scholars completed The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Islamism seems to have virtually disappeared from English usage.[citation needed ] The term remained "practically absent from the vocabulary" of scholars, writers or journalists until the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1978-79, which brought Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of "Islamic government" to Iran.

This new usage appeared without taking into consideration how the term Islamist (m. sing.: Islami, pl. nom/acc: Islamiyyun, gen. Islamiyyin; f. sing/pl: Islamiyyah) was already being used in traditional Arabic scholarship in a theological sense as in relating to the religion of Islam, not a political ideology. In heresiographical, theological and historical works, such as al-Ash'ari's well-known encyclopaedia Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn ( The Opinions of The Islamists), an Islamist refers to any person who attributes himself to Islam without affirming nor negating that attribution. If used consistently, it is for impartiality, but if used in reference to a certain person or group in particular without others, it implies that the author is either unsure whether to affirm or negate their attribution to Islam, or trying to insinuate his disapproval of the attribution without controversy. In contrast, referring to a person as a Muslim or a Kafir implies an explicit affirmation or a negation of that person's attribution to Islam. In order to evade the problem resulting from the confusion between the Western and Arabic usage of the term Islamist, Arab journalists invented the term Islamawi ( Islamian) instead of Islami ( Islamist) in reference to the politicists, which is nonetheless sometimes criticized as being ungrammatical.

Islamism has been defined as:

"the belief that Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life" (Sheri Berman);

the belief that Islam should influence political systems (Cambridge English Dictionary);

"the [Islamic] ideology that guides society as a whole and that [teaches] law must be in conformity with the Islamic sharia", (W. E. Shepard);

a combination of two pre-existing trends

movements to revive the faith, weakened by "foreign influence, political opportunism, moral laxity, and the forgetting of sacred texts";

the more recent movement against imperialism/colonialism, morphed into a more simple anti-Westernism; formerly embraced by leftists and nationalists but whose supporters have turned to Islam.

a form of "religionized politics" and an instance of religious fundamentalism that imagines an Islamic community claiming global hegemony for its values (Bassam Tibi);

"political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam" (Associated Press stylebook);

a political ideology which seeks to enforce Islamic precepts and norms as generally applicable rules for people's conduct; and whose adherents seek a state based on Islamic values and laws (sharia) and rejecting Western guiding principles, such as freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, artistic freedom and freedom of religion (Thomas Volk);

a broad set of political ideologies that utilize and draw inspiration from Islamic symbols and traditions in pursuit of a sociopolitical objective-also called "political Islam" (Britannica);

"[... has become shorthand for] 'Muslims we don't like.'" (Council on American-Islamic Relations-in complaint about AP's earlier definition of Islamist);
In "Western popular discourse generally uses 'Islamism' when discussing the negative or 'that-which-is-bad' in Muslim communities. The signifier, 'Islam,' on the other hand, is reserved for the positive or neutral." (David Belt).

a movement so broad and flexible it reaches out to "everything to everyone" in Islam, making it "unsustainable" (Tarek Osman);

an alternative social provider to the poor masses;

an angry platform for the disillusioned young;

a loud trumpet-call announcing "a return to the pure religion" to those seeking an identity;

a "progressive, moderate religious platform" for the affluent and liberal;

... and at the extremes, a violent vehicle for rejectionists and radicals.

an Islamic "movement that seeks cultural differentiation from the West and reconnection with the pre-colonial symbolic universe", (François Burgat);

"the active assertion and promotion of beliefs, prescriptions, laws or policies that are held to be Islamic in character," (International Crisis Group);

a movement of "Muslims who draw upon the belief, symbols, and language of Islam to inspire, shape, and animate political activity;" which may contain moderate, tolerant, peaceful activists or those who "preach intolerance and espouse violence", (Robert H. Pelletreau);

"All who seek to Islamize their environment, whether in relation to their lives in society, their family circumstances, or the workplace ...", (Roy Olivier).

Islamists simply believe that their movement is either a corrected version or a revival of Islam, but others believe that Islamism is a modern deviation from Islam which should either be denounced or dismissed.

Another source distinguishes Islamist from Islamic by emphasizing the fact that Islam "refers to a religion and culture in existence over a millennium", whereas Islamism "is a political/religious phenomenon linked to the great events of the 20th century". Islamists have, at least at times, defined themselves as "Islamiyyoun/Islamists" to differentiate themselves from "Muslimun/Muslims". Daniel Pipes describes Islamism as a modern ideology that owes more to European utopian political ideologies and "isms" than to the traditional Islamic religion.

According to Salman Sayyid, "Islamism is not a replacement of Islam akin to the way it could be argued that communism and fascism are secularized substitutes for Christianity." Rather, it is "a constellation of political projects that seek to position Islam in the centre of any social order".

The modern revival of Islamic devotion and the attraction to things Islamic can be traced to several events.

By the end of World War I, most Muslim states were seen to be dominated by the Christian-leaning Western states. Explanations offered were: that the claims of Islam were false and the Christian or post-Christian West had finally come up with another system that was superior; or Islam had failed through not being true to itself. The second explanation being preferred by Muslims, a redoubling of faith and devotion by the faithful was called for to reverse this tide.

The connection between the lack of an Islamic spirit and the lack of victory was underscored by the disastrous defeat of Arab nationalist-led armies fighting Israel under the slogan "Land, Sea and Air" in the 1967 Six-Day War, compared to the (perceived) near-victory of the Yom Kippur War six years later. In that war the military's slogan was "God is Great".

Along with the Yom Kippur War came the Arab oil embargo where the (Muslim) Persian Gulf oil-producing states' dramatic decision to cut back on production and quadruple the price of oil, made the terms oil, Arabs and Islam synonymous with power throughout the world, and especially in the Muslim world's public imagination. Many Muslims believe as Saudi Prince Saud al Faisal did that the hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth obtained from the Persian Gulf's huge oil deposits were nothing less than a gift from God to the Islamic faithful.

Al-Manār magazine, the most popular 20th century Islamic journal that called for the restoration of Caliphate

The abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 1 November 1922 ended the Ottoman Empire, which had lasted since 1299. On 11 November 1922, at the Conference of Lausanne, the sovereignty of the Grand National Assembly exercised by the Government in Angora (now Ankara) over Turkey was recognized. The last sultan, Mehmed VI, departed the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul), on 17 November 1922. The legal position was solidified with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923. In March 1924, the Caliphate was abolished legally by the Turkish National Assembly, marking the end of Ottoman influence. This shocked the Sunni clerical world, and many felt the need to present Islam not as a traditional religion but as an innovative socio-political ideology of a modern nation-state.

The reaction to new realities of the modern world gave birth to Islamist ideologues like Rashid Rida and Abul A'la Maududi and organizations such as Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam in India. Rashid Rida, a prominent Syrian-born Salafi theologian based in Egypt, was known as a revivalist of Hadith studies in Sunni seminaries and a pioneering theoretician of Islamism in the modern age. During 1922-1923, Rida published a series of articles in seminal magazine titled "The Caliphate or the Supreme Imamate". In this highly influential treatise, Rida advocates for the restoration of Caliphate guided by Islamic jurists and proposes gradualist measures of education, reformation and purification through the efforts of reform movements across the globe.

Sayyid Rashid Rida had visited India in 1912 and was impressed by the Deoband and Nadwatul Ulama seminaries. These seminaries carried the legacy of Sayyid Ahmad Shahid and his pre-modern Islamic emirate. In British India, the Khilafat movement (1919-24) following World War I led by Shaukat Ali, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Abul Kalam Azad came to exemplify South Asian Muslims' aspirations for Caliphate.

Salafi-Islamist protest against the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims in Sydney, 15 September 2012. The protesters carry signs reading "Behead all those who insult the Prophet" and "Our dead are in Paradise. Your dead are in HELL!"

The memory in Muslim societies of the many centuries of "cultural and institutional success" of Islamic civilization that have created an "intense resistance to an alternative 'civilizational order'", such as Western civilization.[63]

The proximity of the core of the Muslim world to Europe and Christendom where it first conquered and then was conquered. Iberia in the eighth century, the Crusades which began in the eleventh century, then for centuries the Ottoman Empire, were all fields of war between Europe and Islam.[64]

In the words of Bernard Lewis:

For almost a thousand years, from the first Moorish landing in Spain to the second Turkish siege of Vienna, Europe was under constant threat from Islam. In the early centuries it was a double threat-not only of invasion and conquest, but also of conversion and assimilation. All but the easternmost provinces of the Islamic realm had been taken from Christian rulers, and the vast majority of the first Muslims west of Iran and Arabia were converts from Christianity ... Their loss was sorely felt and it heightened the fear that a similar fate was in store for Europe.[65]

The Islamic world felt its own anger and resentment at the much more recent technological superiority of westerners who,

are the perpetual teachers; we, the perpetual students. Generation after generation, this asymmetry has generated an inferiority complex, forever exacerbated by the fact that their innovations progress at a faster pace than we can absorb them. ... The best tool to reverse the inferiority complex to a superiority complex ... Islam would give the whole culture a sense of dignity.[66]

For Islamists, the primary threat of the West is cultural rather than political or economic. Cultural dependency robs one of faith and identity and thus destroys Islam and the Islamic community (ummah) far more effectively than political rule.[67]

Whatever unity religious Muslims and the capitalist west felt in the face of a common atheist Communist enemy disappeared with the end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.[68]

Protests against Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Christian governor of Jakarta, 2 December 2016

Islamism is described by Graham E. Fuller as part of identity politics, specifically the religiously oriented nationalism that emerged in the Third World in the 1970s: " resurgent Hinduism in India, Religious Zionism in Israel, militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka, resurgent Sikh nationalism in the Punjab, ' Liberation Theology' of Catholicism in Latin America, and Islamism in the Muslim world."

By the late 1960s, non-Soviet Muslim-majority countries had won their independence and they tended to fall into one of the two cold-war blocs - with "Nasser's Egypt, Baathist Syria and Iraq, Muammar el-Qaddafi's Libya, Algeria under Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumedienne, Southern Yemen, and Sukarno's Indonesia" aligned with Moscow. Aware of the close attachment of the population with Islam, "school books of the 1960s in these countries "went out of their way to impress upon children that socialism was simply Islam properly understood." Olivier Roy writes that the "failure of the 'Arab socialist' model ... left room for new protest ideologies to emerge in deconstructed societies ..." Gilles Kepel notes that when a collapse in oil prices led to widespread violent and destructive rioting by the urban poor in Algeria in 1988, what might have appeared to be a natural opening for the left, was instead the beginning of major victories for the Islamist Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party. The reason being the corruption and economic malfunction of the policies of the Third World socialist ruling party (FNL) had "largely discredited" the "vocabulary of socialism". In the post-colonial era, many Muslim-majority states such as Indonesia, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, were ruled by authoritarian regimes which were often continuously dominated by the same individuals or their cadres for decades. Simultaneously, the military played a significant part in the government decisions in many of these states ( the outsized role played by the military could be seen also in democratic Turkey).

The authoritarian regimes, backed by military support, took extra measures to silence leftist opposition forces, often with the help of foreign powers. Silencing of leftist opposition deprived the masses a channel to express their economic grievances and frustration toward the lack of democratic processes. As a result, in the post-Cold War era, civil society-based Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood were the only organizations capable to provide avenues of protest.

The dynamic was repeated after the states had gone through a democratic transition. In Indonesia, some secular political parties have contributed to the enactment of religious bylaws in order to counter the popularity of Islamist oppositions. In Egypt, during the short period of the democratic experiment, Muslim Brotherhood seized the momentum by being the most cohesive political movement among the opposition.

Few observers contest the immense influence of Islamism within the Muslim world. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, political movements based on the liberal ideology of free expression and democratic rule have led the opposition in other parts of the world such as Latin America, Eastern Europe and many parts of Asia; however "the simple fact is that political Islam currently reigns [circa 2002-3] as the most powerful ideological force across the Muslim world today".

The strength of Islamism also draws from the strength of religiosity in general in the Muslim world. Compared to other societies around the globe, "[w]hat is striking about the Islamic world is that ... it seems to have been the least penetrated by irreligion". Where other peoples may look to the physical or social sciences for answers in areas which their ancestors regarded as best left to scripture, in the Muslim world, religion has become more encompassing, not less, as "in the last few decades, it has been the fundamentalists who have increasingly represented the cutting edge" of Muslim culture.

Writing in 2009, German journalist Sonja Zekri described Islamists in Egypt and other Muslim countries as "extremely influential. ... They determine how one dresses, what one eats. In these areas, they are incredibly successful. ... Even if the Islamists never come to power, they have transformed their countries." Political Islamists were described as "competing in the democratic public square in places like Turkey, Tunisia, Malaysia and Indonesia".

Islamism is not a united movement and takes different forms and spans a wide range of strategies and tactics towards the powers in place-"destruction, opposition, collaboration, indifference"-not because (or not just because) of differences of opinions, but because it varies as circumstances change. p. 54

Moderate and reformist Islamists who accept and work within the democratic process include parties like the Tunisian Ennahda Movement. Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan is basically a socio-political and " vanguard party" working with in Pakistan's Democratic political process, but has also gained political influence through military coup d'états in the past. Other Islamist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine participate in the democratic and political process as well as armed attacks by their powerful paramilitary wings. Jihadist organizations like al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and groups such as the Taliban, entirely reject democracy, seeing it as a form of (disbelief) calling for offensive jihad on a religious basis.

Another major division within Islamism is between what Graham E. Fuller has described as the conservative "guardians of the tradition" ( Salafis, such as those in the Wahhabi movement) and the revolutionary "vanguard of change and Islamic reform" centered around the Muslim Brotherhood. Olivier Roy argues that " Sunni pan-Islamism underwent a remarkable shift in the second half of the 20th century" when the Muslim Brotherhood movement and its focus on Islamisation of pan-Arabism was eclipsed by the Salafi movement with its emphasis on "sharia rather than the building of Islamic institutions". Following the Arab Spring (starting in 2011), Roy has described Islamism as "increasingly interdependent" with democracy in much of the Arab Muslim world, such that "neither can now survive without the other." While Islamist political culture itself may not be democratic, Islamists need democratic elections to maintain their legitimacy. At the same time, their popularity is such that no government can call itself democratic that excludes mainstream Islamist groups.

Arguing distinctions between "radical/moderate" or "violent/peaceful" Islamism were "simplistic", circa 2017, scholar Morten Valbjørn put forth these "much more sophisticated typologies" of Islamism:

resistance/revolutionary/reformist Islamism,

Islahi-Ikhwani/Jihadi-Ikhwani/Islah-salafi/Jihadi-salafi Islamism,

reformist/revolutionary/societal/spiritual Islamism,

Third Worldist/Neo-Third Worldist Islamism,

Statist/Non-Statist Islamism,

Salafist Jihadi/Ikhwani Islamism, or

mainstream/irredentist jihadi/doctrinaire jihadi Islamism.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, major moderate Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ennahda were excluded from democratic political participation. At least in part for that reason, Islamists attempted to overthrow the government in the Algerian Civil War (1991-2002) and waged a terror campaign in Egypt in the 90s. These attempts were crushed and in the 21st century, Islamists turned increasingly to non-violent methods, and "moderate Islamists" now make up the majority of the contemporary Islamist movements.

Among some Islamists, Democracy has been harmonized with Islam by means of (consultation). The tradition of consultation by the ruler being considered Sunnah of the prophet Muhammad, ( Majlis-ash-Shura being a common name for legislative bodies in Islamic countries).

Among the varying goals, strategies, and outcomes of "moderate Islamist movements" are a formal abandonment of their original vision of implementing (also termed Post-Islamism) -- done by the Ennahda Movement of Tunisia, and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) of Indonesia. Others, such as the National Congress of Sudan, have implemented the sharia with support from wealthy, conservative states (primarily Saudi Arabia).

According to one theory -- "inclusion-moderation"-the interdependence of political outcome with strategy means that the more moderate the Islamists become, the more likely they are to be politically included (or unsuppressed); and the more accommodating the government is, the less "extreme" Islamists become. A prototype of harmonizing Islamist principles within the modern state framework was the " Turkish model", based on the apparent success of the rule of the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkish model, however, came "unstuck" after a purge and violations of democratic principles by the Erdoğan regime. Critics of the concept - which include both Islamists who reject democracy and anti-Islamists - hold that Islamist aspirations are fundamentally incompatible with the democratic principles.

The contemporary Salafi movement is sometimes described as a variety of Islamism and sometimes as a different school of Islam, such as a "phase between fundamentalism and Islamism". Originally a reformist movement of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abdul, and Rashid Rida, that rejected maraboutism (Sufism), the established schools of fiqh, and demanded individual interpretation () of the Quran and Sunnah; it evolved into a movement embracing the conservative doctrines of the medieval Hanbali theologian Ibn Taymiyyah. While all salafi believe Islam covers every aspect of life, that sharia law must be implemented completely and that the Caliphate must be recreated to rule the Muslim world, they differ in strategies and priorities, which generally fall into three groups:

The "quietist" school advocates Islamization through preaching, educating the masses on sharia and "purification" of religious practices and ignoring government.

Activist (or haraki) Salafi activism encourages political participation-opposing government loans with interest or normalization of relations with Israel, etc. As of 2013, this school makes up the majority of Salafism. Salafist political parties in the Muslim world include Hizb al-Nour in Egypt, the Al Islah Party of Yemen and Al Asalah of Bahrain.

Salafi jihadism, (see below) is inspired by the ideology of Sayyid Qutb (Qutbism, see below), and sees secular institutions as an enemy of Islam, advocating revolution in order to pave the way for the establishment of a new Caliphate.

One of the antecedents of the contemporary Salafi movement is Wahhabism, an 18th-century reform movement from the Arabia founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, gave his (pledge of allegiance to a ruler/commander), to the House of Saud, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, and so have almost all Wahhabi since, (small numbers have become Salafi Jihadist or other dissidents). Obedience to a ruler precluding any political activism (short of an advisor whispering advice to the ruler), there are few Wahhabi Islamists, at least in Saudi Arabia.

Wahhabism and Salafism more or less merged by the 1960s in Saudi Arabia, and together they benefited from $100s of billions in state-sponsored worldwide propagation of conservative Islam financed by Saudi petroleum exports, (a phenomenon often dubbed as Petro-Islam). (This financing has contributed indirectly to the upsurge of Salafi Jihadism.)

Qutbism refers to the Jihadist ideology formulated by Sayyid Qutb, (an influential figure of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the 50s and 60s). Qutbism argued that not only was sharia essential for Islam, but that since it was not in force, Islam did not really exist in the Muslim world, which was in Jahiliyya (the state of pre-Islamic ignorance). To remedy this situation he urged a two-pronged attack of 1) preaching to convert, and 2) jihad to forcibly eliminate the "structures" of Jahiliyya. Defensive jihad against Jahiliyya Muslim governments would not be enough. "Truth and falsehood cannot coexist on this earth", so offensive Jihad was needed to eliminate Jahiliyya not only from the Islamic homeland but from the face of the Earth. In addition, vigilance against Western and Jewish conspiracies against Islam would-be needed.

Although Qutb was executed before he could fully spell out his ideology, his ideas were disseminated and expanded on by the later generations, among them Abdullah Yusuf Azzam and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who was a student of Qutb's brother Muhammad Qutb and later became a mentor of Osama bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri helped to pass on stories of "the purity of Qutb's character" and persecution he suffered, and played an extensive role in the normalization of offensive Jihad among followers of Qutb.

Salafi Jihadism or revolutionary Salafism emerged prominent during the 80s when Osama bin Laden and thousands of other militant Muslims came from around the Muslim world to help fight the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan. Local Afghan Muslims had declared jihad against the Soviets ( mujahideen) and were aided with financial, logistical and military support by Saudi Arabia and the United States, but after Soviet forces left Afghanistan, this funding and interest by America and Saudi ceased. The international volunteers, (originally organized by Abdullah Azzam), were triumphant in victory, away from the moderating influence of home and family, among the radicalized influence of other militants. Wanting to capitalize on financial, logistical and military network that had been developed they sought to continue waging jihad elsewhere. Their new targets, however, included the United States-funder of the mujahideen but "perceived as the greatest enemy of the faith"; and governments of majority-Muslims countries-perceived of as apostates from Islam.

Salafist-jihadist ideology combined the literal and traditional interpretations of scripture of Salafists, with the promotion and fighting of jihad against military and civilian targets in the pursuit of the establishment of an Islamic state and eventually a new Caliphate.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Raqqa, Syria, 2014

Other characteristics of the movement include the formal process of taking (oath of allegiance) to the leader ( amir), which is inspired by Hadiths and early Muslim practice and included in Wahhabi teaching; and the concepts of "near enemy" (governments of majority-Muslims countries) and "far enemy" (United States and other Western countries). (The term "near enemy" was coined by Mohammed Abdul-Salam Farag who led the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) in 1981.) The "far enemy" was introduced and formally declared under attack by al-Qaeda in 1996.

The ideology saw its rise during the 90s when the Muslim world experienced numerous geopolitical crisis, notably the Algerian Civil War (1991-2002), Bosnian War (1992-1995), and the First Chechen War (1994-1996). Within these conflicts, political Islam often acted as a mobilizing factor for the local belligerents, who demanded financial, logistical and military support from al-Qaeda, in the exchange for active proliferation of the ideology. After the 1998 bombings of US embassies, September 11 attacks (2001), the US-led invasion of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), Salafi Jihadism lost its momentum, being devastated by the US counterterrorism operations, culminating in bin Laden's death in 2011. After the Arab Spring (2011) and subsequent Syrian Civil War (2011-present), the remnants of al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq restored their capacity, rapidly developing into the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, spreading its influence throughout the conflict zones of MENA region and the globe. Salafi Jihadism makes up a minority of the contemporary Islamist movements.

Although most of the research and reporting about Islamism or political Islam has been focused on Sunni Islamist movements, Islamism exists in Twelver Shia Islam (the second largest branch of Islam that makes up approximately 10% of all Muslims.). Islamist Shi'ism, also known as Shi'i Islamism, is primarily but not exclusively associated with the thought of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with the Islamist Revolution he led, Islamic Republic of Iran that he founded, and the religious-political activities and resources of the republic.

Compared to the "Types" of Islamism mentioned above, Khomeinism differs from Wahhabism (which does not consider Shi'ism truly Islamic), Salafism (both orthodox or Jihadi-Shi'a do not consider some of the most prominent salaf worthy of emulation), reformist Islamism (the Islamic Republic executed more than 3,400 political dissidents between June 1981 and March 1982 in the process of consolidating power).

Khomeini and his followers helped translate the works of Maududi and Qutb into Persian and were influenced by them, but their views differed from them and other Sunni Islamists in being "more leftist and more clerical":

more leftist in the propaganda campaign leading up to the revolution, emphasizing exploitation of the poor by the rich and of Muslims by imperialism;

more clerical in the new post-revolutionary state, where clerics were in control of the levers of power (the Supreme Leader, Guardian Council, etc., under the concept of Velayat-e Faqih.).

Khomeini was a "radical" Islamist, like Qutb and unlike Maudidi. He believed that foreigners, Jews and their agents were conspiring "to keep us backward, to keep us in our present miserable state". Those who call themselves Muslims but were secular and Westernizing, were not just corrupt or misguided, but "agents" of the Western governments, helping to "plunder" Muslim lands as part of a long-term conspiracy against Islam. Only the rule of an Islamic jurist, administering Sharia law, stood between this abomination and justice, and could not wait for peaceful, gradual transition. It is the duty of Muslims to "destroy" "all traces" of any other sort of government other than true Islamic governance because these are "systems of unbelief". "Troublesome" groups that cause "corruption in Muslim society," and damage "Islam and the Islamic state" are to be eliminated just as the Prophet Muhammad eliminated the Jews of Bani Qurayza. Islamic revolution to install "the form of government willed by Islam" will not end with one Islamic state in Iran. Once this government comes "into being, none of the governments now existing in the world" will "be able to resist it;" they will "all capitulate".

Khomeini's form of Islamism was particularly unique in the world because it completely swept the old regime away, created a new regime with a new constitution, new institutions and a new concept of governance (the Velayat-e Faqih). A historical event, it changed militant Islam from a topic of limited impact and interest to a topic that few either inside or outside the Muslim world were unaware of. As he originally described it in lectures to his students, the system of " Islamic Government" was one where the leading Islamic jurist would enforce sharia law-law which "has absolute authority over all individuals and the Islamic government". The jurist would not be elected, and no legislature would be needed since divine law called for rule by jurist and "there is not a single topic in human life for which Islam has not provided instruction and established a norm". Without this system, injustice, corruption, waste, exploitation and sin would reign, and Islam would decay. This plan was disclosed to his students and the religious community but not widely publicized. The constitution of the Islamic Republic written after the revolution did include a legislature and president, but supervising the entire government was a " Supreme Leader"/guardian jurist.

Islamist Shi'ism has been crucial to the development of worldwide Islamism, because the Iranian regime attempted to export its revolution. Although, the Islamist ideology was originally imported from Muslim Brotherhood, Iranian relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Republic of Iran deteriorated due to its involvement in the Syrian civil war. However, the majority Usuli Shi'ism rejects the idea of an Islamist State in the period of Occultation of the Hidden Imam.

Shi'ism and Iran

Twelver Shia Muslim live mainly in a half dozen or so countries scattered around the Middle East and South Asia. The Islamic Republic of Iran has become "the de facto leader" of the Shi'i world by virtue of being the largest Shia-majority state, having a long history of national cohesion and Shia-rule, being the site of the first and "only true" Islamist revolution (see History section below), and having the financial resources of a major petroleum exporter. Iran's influence has spread into a cultural-geographic area of "Irano-Arab Shiism", establishing Iranian regional power, supporting "Shia militias and parties beyond its borders", intertwining assistance to fellow Shi'a with "Iranization" of them.

Shi'i Islamism in Iran has been influenced by the Sunni Islamists and their organizations, particularly Sayyid Rashid Rida, Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood organization), Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi, but has also been described as "distinct" from Sunni Muslim Brotherhood Islamism, "more leftist and more clerical", with its own historical influencers:

Sheikh Fazlullah Nouri, a cleric of the Qajar dynasty court and the leader of the anti-constitutionalists during the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, who declared the new constitution contrary to sharia law.

Navvab Safavi, a religious student who founded the Fada'iyan-e Islam, seeking to purify Islam in Iran by killing off 'corrupting individuals', i.e. certain leading intellectual and political figures (including both a former and current prime minister). After the group was crushed by the government, surviving members reportedly chose Ayatollah Khomeini as a new spiritual leader.

Ali Shariati, a non-cleric "socialist Shi'i" who absorbed Marxist ideas in France and had considerable influence on young Iranians through his preaching that Imam Hussein was not just a holy figure but the original oppressed one (muzloun), and his killer, the Sunni Umayyad Caliphate, the "analog" of the modern Iranian people's "oppression by the shah".

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a Shi'i Islamic scholar in Iraq who critiqued Marxism, socialism and capitalism and helped lead Shi'i opposition to Saddam Hussein's Baath regime before being executed by them.

Mahmoud Taleghani, an ayatollah and contemporary of Khomeini, was more leftist, more tolerant and more sympathetic to democracy, but less influential, though he still had a substantial following. Was deposed from revolutionary leadership after warning of a "return to despotism" by the revolutionary leadership.

Some Western political scientists see the unchanging socio-economic condition in the Muslim world as a major factor. Olivier Roy believes "the socioeconomic realities that sustained the Islamist wave are still here and are not going to change: poverty, uprootedness, crises in values and identities, the decay of the educational systems, the North-South opposition, and the problem of immigrant integration into the host societies".

Demographic transition (caused by the gap in time between the lowering of death rates from medical advances and the lowering of fertility rates), leads to population growth beyond the ability of housing, employment, public transit, sewer and water to provide. Combined with economic stagnation, urban agglomerations have been created in Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, Karachi, Dhaka, and Jakarta, each with well over 12 million citizens, millions of them young and unemployed or underemployed. Such a demographic, alienated from the westernized ways of the urban elite, but uprooted from the comforts and more passive traditions of the villages they came from, is understandably favourably disposed to an Islamic system promising a better world-an ideology providing an "emotionally familiar basis for group identity, solidarity, and exclusion; an acceptable basis for legitimacy and authority; an immediately intelligible formulation of principles for both a critique of the present and a program for the future." One American anthropologist in Iran in the early 1970s (before the revolution), when comparing a "stable village with a new urban slum", discovered that where "the villagers took religion with a grain of salt and even ridiculed visiting preachers", the slum dwellers-all recently dispossessed peasants -- "used religion as a substitute for their lost communities, oriented social life around the mosque, and accepted with zeal the teachings of the local mullah".

Gilles Kepel also notes that Islamist uprisings in Iran and Algeria, though a decade apart, coincided with the large numbers of youth who were "the first generation taught en masse to read and write and had been separated from their own rural, illiterate progenitors by a cultural gulf that radical Islamist ideology could exploit". Their "rural, illiterate" parents were too settled in tradition to be interested in Islamism and their children "more likely to call into question the utopian dreams of the 1970s generation", but they embraced revolutionary political Islam. Olivier Roy also asserts "it is not by chance that the Iranian Revolution took place the very year the proportion of city-dweller in Iran passed the 50% mark". and offers statistics in support for other countries (in 1990 Algeria, housing was so crowded that there was an average of eight inhabitants to a room, and 80% of youth aged 16 to 29 still lived with their parents). "The old clan or ethnic solidarities, the clout of the elders, and family control are fading little by little in the face of changes in the social structure ..." This theory implies that a decline in illiteracy and rural emigration will mean a decline in Islamism.

Starting in the mid-1970s the Islamic resurgence was funded by an abundance of money from Saudi Arabian oil exports. The tens of billions of dollars in " petro-Islam" largesse obtained from the recently heightened price of oil funded an estimated "90% of the expenses of the entire faith."

Throughout the Muslim world, religious institutions for people both young and old, from children's madrassas to high-level scholarships received Saudi funding, "books, scholarships, fellowships, and mosques" (for example, "more than 1500 mosques were built and paid for with money obtained from public Saudi funds over the last 50 years"), along with training in the Kingdom for the preachers and teachers who went on to teach and work at these universities, schools, mosques, etc.

The interpretation of Islam promoted by this funding was the strict, conservative Saudi-based Wahhabism or Salafism. In its harshest form it preached that Muslims should not only "always oppose" infidels "in every way," but "hate them for their religion ... for Allah's sake," that democracy "is responsible for all the horrible wars of the 20th century," that Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslims were infidels, etc. While this effort has by no means converted all, or even most Muslims to the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam, it has done much to overwhelm more moderate local interpretations, and has set the Saudi-interpretation of Islam as the "gold standard" of religion in minds of some or many Muslims.

Though the much smaller Qatar could not provide the same level of funding as Saudi Arabia, it was also a petroleum exporter and also sponsored Islamist groups. Qatar backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt even after the 2013 overthrow of the MB regime of Mohamed Morsi, with Qatar ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani denouncing the coup. In June 2016, Mohamed Morsi was sentenced to life for passing state secrets to Qatar.

Qatar has also backed Islamist factions in Libya, Syria and Yemen. In Libya, Qatar supported Islamists with tens of millions of dollars in aid, military training and "more than 20,000 tons of weapons", both before and after the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi.

Hamas, in Palestine, has received considerable financial support as well as diplomatic help.

Afghan mujahideen representatives with President Ronald Reagan at the White House in 1983.

During the Cold War, particularly during the 1950s, during the 1960s, and during most of the 1970s, the U.S. and other countries in the Western Bloc occasionally attempted to take advantage of the rise of Islamic religiousity by directing it against secular leftist/ communist/ nationalist insurgents/adversaries, particularly against the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc states, whose ideology was not just secular but anti-religious.

During the 1970s and sometimes later, this aid sometimes went to fledgling Islamists and Islamist groups that later came to be seen as dangerous enemies. The US spent billions of dollars to aid the mujahideen Muslim Afghanistan enemies of the Soviet Union, and non-Afghan veterans of the war (such as Osama bin Laden) returned home with their prestige, "experience, ideology, and weapons", and had considerable impact.

Although it is a strong opponent of Israel's existence, Hamas, officially founded in 1987, traces its origins back to institutions and clerics which were supported by Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. Israel tolerated and supported Islamist movements in Gaza, with figures like Ahmed Yassin, as Israel perceived them preferable to the secular and then more powerful al-Fatah with the PLO.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat - whose policies included opening Egypt to Western investment (); transferring Egypt's allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States; and making peace with Israel-released Islamists from prison and welcomed home exiles in tacit exchange for political support in his struggle against leftists. His "encouraging of the emergence of the Islamist movement" was said to have been "imitated by many other Muslim leaders in the years that followed." This "gentlemen's agreement" between Sadat and Islamists broke down in 1975 but not before Islamists came to completely dominate university student unions. Sadat was later assassinated and a formidable insurgency was formed in Egypt in the 1990s. The French government has also been reported to have promoted Islamist preachers "in the hope of channeling Muslim energies into zones of piety and charity."

Olivier Roy dates the beginning of the Islamism movement "more or less in 1940", and its development proceeding "over half a century".

Some Islamic revivalist movements and leaders which pre-date Islamism but share some characteristics with it include:

Ahmad Sirhindi (~1564-1624) was largely responsible for the purification, reassertion and revival of conservative orthodox Sunni Islam in India during Islam's second millennium.

Ibn Taymiyyah, a Syrian Islamic jurist during the 13th and 14th centuries argued against the practices such as the celebration of Muhammad's birthday, and seeking assistance at the grave of the Prophet.

Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, advocated doing away with the later religious accretions like worship at graves.

Shah Waliullah of India was a forerunner of reformist Islamists like Muhammad Abduh, Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Asad in his belief that there was "a constant need for new ijtihad as the Muslim community progressed.

Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi was a disciple and successor of Shah Waliullah's son who led a jihadist movement and attempted to create an Islamic state based on the enforcement of Islamic law.

the Deobandi movement, founded after the defeat of the Indian Rebellion, around 1867, led to the establishment of thousands of conservative Islamic schools or madrasahs throughout modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Preaching Islamic alternatives to this humiliating decline were Jamal ad-din al-Afghani (1837-97), Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) and Rashid Rida (1865-1935). Abduh's student Rida is widely regarded as one of the "ideological forefathers" of contemporary Islamist movement, and along with early Salafiyya Hassan al-Banna,and Mustafa al-Siba'i, preached that a truly Islamic society would follow sharia law, reject taqlid, (the blind imitation of earlier authorities), restore the Caliphate.

Sayyid Muhammad Rashid Rida (Arabic: سيد رشيد رضا; 23 September 1865 - 22 August 1935).

Syrian-Egyptian Islamic cleric Muhammad Rashid Rida was one of the earliest 20th-century Sunni scholars to articulate the modern concept of an Islamic state, influencing the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni Islamist movements. In his influential book al-Khilafa aw al-Imama al-'Uzma (" The Caliphate or the Grand Imamate"); Rida explained that that societies that properly obeyed would be successful alternatives to the disorder and injustice of both capitalism and socialism.

This society would be ruled by a Caliphate; the ruling Caliph ( Khalifa) governing through (consultation), and applying Sharia (Islamic laws) in partnership with Islamic juristic clergy, who would use Ijtihad to update by evaluating scripture. With the providing true Islamic governance, Islamic civilization would be revitalised, the political and legal independence of the Muslim umma (community of Muslim believers) would be restored, and the heretical influences of Sufism would be cleansed from Islam. This doctrine would become the blueprint of future Islamist movements.

Iqbal expressed fears of secularism and secular nationalism weakening the spiritual foundations of Islam and Muslim society, and of India's Hindu-majority population crowding out Muslim heritage, culture and political influence. In 1930, Iqbal outlined a vision of an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern India which inspired the Pakistan movement.

He also promoted pan-Islamic unity in his travels to Egypt, Afghanistan, Palestine and Syria.

His ideas later influenced many reformist Islamists, e.g., Muhammad Asad, Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi and Ali Shariati.

Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi was an important early twentieth-century figure in the Islamic revival in India, and then after independence from Britain, in Pakistan. Maududi was an Islamist ideologue and Hanafi Sunni scholar active in Hyderabad Deccan and later in Pakistan. Maududi was born to a clerical family and got his early education at home. At the age of eleven, he was admitted to a public school in Aurangabad. In 1919, he joined the Khilafat Movement and got closer to the scholars of Deoband. He commenced the dars-i nizami education under supervision of Deobandi seminary at the Fatihpuri mosque in Delhi. Trained as a lawyer he worked as a journalist, and gained a wide audience with his books (translated into many languages) which placed Islam in a modern context. His writings had a profound impact on Sayyid Qutb. Maududi also founded the Jamaat-e-Islami party in 1941 and remained its leader until 1972.

In 1925, he wrote a book on Jihad, al-Jihad fil-Islam ( Arabic: الجهاد في الاسلام), that can be regarded as his first contribution to Islamism. Maududi believed that Muslim society could not be Islamic without Sharia (influencing Qutb and Khomeini), and the establishment of an Islamic state to enforce it. The state would be based on the principles of: (unity of God), (prophethood) and (caliphate). Maududi was uninterested in violent revolution or populist policies such as those of the Iranian Revolution, but sought gradual change in the hearts and minds of individuals from the top of society downward through an educational process or da'wah. Maududi believed that Islam was all-encompassing: "Everything in the universe is 'Muslim' for it obeys God by submission to His laws." "The man who denies God is called Kafir (concealer) because he conceals by his disbelief what is inherent in his nature and embalmed in his own soul."

Hasan al-Banna

Roughly contemporaneous with Maududi was the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Ismailiyah, Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al Banna. His was arguably the first, largest and most influential modern Islamic political/religious organization. Under the motto "the Qur'an is our constitution", it sought Islamic revival through preaching and also by providing basic community services including schools, mosques, and workshops. Like Maududi, Al Banna believed in the necessity of government rule based on Shariah law implemented gradually and by persuasion, and of eliminating all Western imperialist influence in the Muslim world.

Some elements of the Brotherhood, did engage in violence, assassinating Egypt's premier Mahmud Fami Naqrashi, in 1948. MB founder Al-Banna was assassinated in retaliation three months later. The Brotherhood has suffered periodic repression in Egypt and has been banned several times, in 1948 and several years later following confrontations with Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser, who jailed thousands of members for several years.

The Brotherhood expanded to many other countries, particularly in the Arab world. In Egypt, despite periodic repression-for many years it was described as "semi-legal"-it was the only opposition group in Egypt able to field candidates during elections. In the 2011-12 Egyptian parliamentary election, the political parties identified as "Islamist" (the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Salafi Al-Nour Party and liberal Islamist Al-Wasat Party) won 75% of the total seats. Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood's party, was the first democratically elected president of Egypt. However, he was deposed during the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état, after mass protests against what were perceived as undemocratic moves by him. Today, the Muslim Brotherhood is designated as a terrorist organization by Bahrain, Russia, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966)

Sayyid Qutb

Qutb, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, is considered by some (Fawaz A. Gerges) to be "the founding father and leading theoretician" of modern jihadists, such as Osama bin Laden. He was executed for allegedly participating in a presidential assassination plot in 1966.

Maududi's political ideas influenced Sayyid Qutb. Like Maududi, he believed Sharia was crucial to Islam, so the restoration of its full enforcement was vital to the world. Since Sharia had not been fully enforced for centuries, Islam had "been extinct for a few centuries". Qutb preached that Muslims must engage in a two-pronged attack of converting individuals through preaching Islam peacefully but also using "physical power and jihad". Force was necessary because "those who have usurped the authority of God" would not give up their power through friendly persuasion. Like Khomeini, whom he influenced he believed the West was engaged in a vicious centuries long war against Islam.

The quick and decisive defeat of the armies of several Arab states by one small non-Muslim country during the Six-Day War constituted a pivotal event in the Arab Muslim world. The defeat along with economic stagnation in the defeated countries, was blamed on the secular Arab nationalism of the ruling regimes. A steep and steady decline in the popularity and credibility of secular, socialist and nationalist politics ensued. Ba'athism, Arab socialism, and Arab nationalism suffered, and different democratic and anti-democratic Islamist movements inspired by Maududi and Sayyid Qutb gained ground.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

The first modern "Islamist state" (with the possible exception of Zia's Pakistan) was established among the Shia of Iran. In a major shock to the rest of the world, Muslim and non-Muslim, a revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the secular, oil-rich, well-armed, pro-American monarchy of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. The revolution was an "indisputable sea change"; Islamism had been a topic of limited impact and interest before 1979, but after the revolution, "nobody within the Muslim world or outside it" remained unaware of militant Islam.

Enthusiasm for the Iranian revolution in the Muslim world could be intense; and there were many reasons for optimism among Islamists outside Iran. Khomeini was implementing Islamic law. He was interested in Pan-Islamic (and pan-Islamist) unity and made efforts to "bridge the gap" between Shiites and Sunnis, declaring "it permissible for Shiites to pray behind Sunni imams", and forbidding Shiites from "criticizing the Caliphs who preceded Ali" (revered by Sunnis but not Shia). The Islamic Republic also downplayed Shia rituals (such as the Day of Ashura), and shrines Before the Revolution, Khomeini acolytes (such as today's Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei), translated and championed the works of the Muslim Brotherhood jihadist theorist, Sayyid Qutb, and other Sunni Islamists/revivalists.

This campaign did not survive his death however. As previously submissive Shia (usually minorities) became more assertive, Sunnis saw mostly "Shia mischief" and a challenge to Sunni dominance. "What followed was a Sunni-versus-Shia contest for dominance, and it grew intense." Animosity between the two sects in Iran and its neighbors is systemic as of 2014, with thousands killed from sectarian fighting in Iraq and Pakistan. Also tarnishing the revolution's image have been "purges, executions, and atrocities", and periodic and increasingly widespread domestic unrest and protest by young Iranians.

Among the "most important by-products of the Iranian revolution" (according to Mehrzad Boroujerdi as of 2014) include "the emergence of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the moral boost provided to Shia forces in Iraq, the regional cold war against Saudi Arabia and Israel, lending an Islamic flavour to the anti-imperialist, anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, and inadvertently widening the Sunni-Shia cleavage". The Islamic Republic has also maintained its hold on power in Iran in spite of US economic sanctions, and has created or assisted like-minded Shia terrorist groups in Iraq ( SCIRI) and Lebanon ( Hezbollah) (two Muslim countries that also have a large percentage of Shiites).

The campaign to overthrow the shah led by Khomeini had had a strong class flavor (Khomeini preached that the shah was widening the gap between rich and poor; condemning the working class to a life of poverty, misery, and drudgery, etc.); and the "pro-rural and pro-poor" approach has led to almost universal access to electricity and clean water, but critics of the regime complain of promises made and not kept: the "sons of the revolution's leaders and the business class that decides to work within the rules of the regime ... flaunt their wealth, driving luxury sportscars around Tehran, posting Instagram pictures of their ski trips and beach trips around the world, all while the poor and the middle class are struggling to survive or maintain the appearance of a dignified life" (according to Shadi Mokhtari). One commitment made (to his followers if not the Iranian public) that has been kept is Guardianship by the Islamic jurist. But Rather than strengthening Islam and eliminating secular values and practices, the "regime has ruined the Iranian people's belief in religion" ("anonymous expert").

The strength of the Islamist movement was manifest in an event which might have seemed sure to turn Muslim public opinion against fundamentalism, but did just the opposite. In 1979 the Grand Mosque in Mecca Saudi Arabia was seized by an armed fundamentalist group and held for over a week. Scores were killed, including many pilgrim bystanders in a gross violation of one of the most holy sites in Islam (and one where arms and violence are strictly forbidden).

In other Muslim countries, blame for and wrath against the seizure was directed not against fundamentalists, but against Islamic fundamentalism's foremost geopolitical enemy-the United States. Ayatollah Khomeini sparked attacks on American embassies when he announced: "It is not beyond guessing that this is the work of criminal American imperialism and international Zionism", despite the fact that the object of the fundamentalists' revolt was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, America's major ally in the region. Anti-American demonstrations followed in the Philippines, Turkey, Bangladesh, India, the UAE, Pakistan, and Kuwait. The US Embassy in Libya was burned by protesters chanting pro-Khomeini slogans and the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan was burned to the ground.

Afghan Mujahideen of Hezb-i Islami, 1986

In 1979, the Soviet Union deployed its 40th Army into Afghanistan, attempting to suppress an Islamic rebellion against an allied Marxist regime in the Afghan Civil War. The conflict, pitting indigenous impoverished Muslims ( mujahideen) against an anti-religious superpower, galvanized thousands of Muslims around the world to send aid and sometimes to go themselves to fight for their faith. Leading this pan-Islamic effort was Palestinian 'alim Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. While the military effectiveness of these " Afghan Arabs" was marginal, an estimated 16,000 to 35,000 Muslim volunteers came from around the world to fight in Afghanistan.

When the Soviet Union abandoned the Marxist Najibullah regime and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 (the regime finally fell in 1992), the victory was seen by many Muslims as the triumph of Islamic faith over superior military power and technology that could be duplicated elsewhere.

The jihadists gained legitimacy and prestige from their triumph both within the militant community and among ordinary Muslims, as well as the confidence to carry their jihad to other countries where they believed Muslims required assistance.

The collapse of the Soviet Union itself, in 1991, was seen by many Islamists, including Bin Laden, as the defeat of a superpower at the hands of Islam. Concerning the $6 billion in aid given by the US and Pakistan's military training and intelligence support to the mujahideen, bin Laden wrote: "[T]he US has no mentionable role" in "the collapse of the Soviet Union... rather the credit goes to God and the " of Afghanistan.

Jihadist leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became fierce critics of Saudi monarchy for opening American military bases in the Gulf region

Another factor in the early 1990s that worked to radicalize the Islamist movement was the Gulf War, which brought several hundred thousand US and allied non-Muslim military personnel to Saudi Arabian soil to put an end to Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait. Prior to 1990 Saudi Arabia played an important role in restraining the many Islamist groups that received its aid. But when Saddam, secularist and Ba'athist dictator of neighboring Iraq, attacked Kuwait (his enemy in the war), western troops came to protect the Saudi monarchy. Islamists accused the Saudi regime of being a puppet of the west.

These attacks resonated with conservative Muslims and the problem did not go away with Saddam's defeat either, since American troops remained stationed in the kingdom, and a de facto cooperation with the Palestinian-Israeli peace process developed. Saudi Arabia attempted to compensate for its loss of prestige among these groups by repressing those domestic Islamists who attacked it (bin Laden being a prime example), and increasing aid to Islamic groups (Islamist madrassas around the world and even aiding some violent Islamist groups) that did not, but its pre-war influence on behalf of moderation was greatly reduced. One result of this was a campaign of attacks on government officials and tourists in Egypt, a bloody civil war in Algeria and Osama bin Laden's terror attacks climaxing in the 9/11 attack.

By the beginning of the twenty first century, "the word secular, a label proudly worn" in the 1960s and 70s was "shunned" and "used to besmirch" political foes in Egypt and the rest of the Muslim world. Islamists surpassed the small secular opposition parties in terms of "doggedness, courage," "risk-taking" or "organizational skills". As of 2002,

In the Middle East and Pakistan, religious discourse dominates societies, the airwaves, and thinking about the world. Radical mosques have proliferated throughout Egypt. Book stores are dominated by works with religious themes ... The demand for sharia, the belief that their governments are unfaithful to Islam and that Islam is the answer to all problems, and the certainty that the West has declared war on Islam; these are the themes that dominate public discussion. Islamists may not control parliaments or government palaces, but they have occupied the popular imagination.

By 2020, approximately 40 years after the Islamic overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the seizure of the Grand Mosque by extremists, a number of observers ( Olivier Roy, Mustafa Akyol, Nader Hashemi) detected a decline in the vigor and popularity of Islamism. Islamism had been an idealized/utopian concept to compare with the grim reality of the status quo, but in more than four decades it had failed to establish a "concrete and viable blueprint for society" despite repeated efforts (Olivier Roy); and instead had left a less than inspiring track record of its impact on the world (Nader Hashemi). Consequently, in addition to the trend towards moderation by Islamist or formerly Islamist parties (such as PKS of Indonesia, AKP of Turkey, and PAS of Malaysia) mentioned above, there has been a social/religious and sometimes political backlash against Islamist rule in countries like Turkey, Iran, and Sudan (Mustafa Akyol).

Polls taken by Arab Barometer in six Arab countries - Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq and Libya - found "Arabs are losing faith in religious parties and leaders." In 2018-19, in all six countries, fewer than 20% of those asked whether they trusted Islamist parties answered in the affirmative. That percentage had fallen (in all six countries) from when the same question was asked in 2012-14. Mosque attendance also declined more than 10 points on average, and the share of those Arabs describing themselves as "not religious" went from 8% in 2013 to 13% in 2018-19. In Syria, Sham al-Ali reports "Rising apostasy among Syrian youths".

Writing in 2021, Nader Hashemi notes that in Iraq, Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, Gaza, Jordan and other places were Islamist parties have come to power or campaigned to, "one general theme stands. The popular prestige of political Islam has been tarnished by its experience with state power." In Iran, hardline Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi has complained, "Iranians are evading religious teachings and turning to secularism." Even Islamist terrorism was in decline and tended "to be local" rather than pan-Islamic. As of 2021, Al-Qaeda consisted of "a bunch of militias" with no effective central command (Fareed Zakaria).

Islamism, or elements of Islamism, have been criticized on numerous grounds, including repression of free expression and individual rights, rigidity, hypocrisy, anti-semitism, misinterpreting the Quran and Sunnah, lack of true understanding of and innovations to Islam ( bid'ah) -- notwithstanding proclaimed opposition to any such innovation by Islamists.

The U.S. government has engaged in efforts to counter militant Islamism ( Jihadism), since 2001. These efforts were centred in the U.S. around public diplomacy programmes conducted by the State Department. There have been calls to create an independent agency in the U.S. with a specific mission of undermining Jihadism. Christian Whiton, an official in the George W. Bush administration, called for a new agency focused on the nonviolent practice of "political warfare" aimed at undermining the ideology. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for establishing something similar to the defunct U.S. Information Agency, which was charged with undermining the communist ideology during the Cold War.

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The dictionary definition of Islamism at Wiktionary

Quotations related to Islamism at Wikiquote

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Islamism (also often called political Islam) is a religio-political ideology. The advocates of Islamism, also known as "al-Islamiyyun", are dedicated to realizing their ideological interpretation of Islam within the context of the state or society. The majority of them are affiliated with Islamic institutions or social mobilization movements, often designated as "al-harakat al-Islamiyyah."

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China and Iraq have experienced the baptism of major wars.

In 1990, Iraq launched a war of aggression against Kuwait.

In 1931, China entered the war of resistance against Japan.
In 1945, just after the war of resistance against Japan, China entered the war of liberation again.

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China: The goods that fall into these categories include optical, technical and medical apparatus, clothing, textiles, footwear, furniture, plastic products and toys. High-tech products account for 29 percent of China's exports.

Kuwait: Oil accounts for 95% of exports, followed by oil generated organic chemicals and automobile production.

# data[].attributes.body
The major exporters of China and Kuwait are the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and the European Union.