On the last Chinese state visit to the UK, a decade ago, the Communist party chief Hu Jintao posed some challenges for his UK handlers. Mr Hu’s aides demanded that his own toilet seat be fitted at Buckingham Palace. And his need for darkness extended to masking tape over the television’s little red light.
An altogether more robust and confident individual will represent the People’s Republic of China at dinner with the Queen, the prime minister and others from the British elite this week. President Xi, 62, has used his three years as party boss to become China’s most popular and powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping, who the Queen met in Beijing in 1986.
He has consolidated power more quickly and effectively than his predecessors. And he is tougher on dissent, to ensure that the party keeps its monopoly on power.
“Uncle Xi”, as his many fans call him at home, enjoys the makings of a personality cult to rival Chairman Mao, although unlike his vote-dependent western counterparts, Mr Xi faces no imperative to convince the public with a human touch. In China’s still state-controlled media environment he dominates the news and billboard space. This week state media announced that a new drama series would focus on the remote, central China village of cave houses where his official legend begins.
Like millions of “educated youth”, the teenage Mr Xi was dispatched by Mao, another former cave-dweller, to experience the grassroots during the cultural revolution. His seven flea-bitten years there, labouring with and later leading peasants, proved the making of him, he claimed in America last month.
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The state narrative glosses over that period, ignoring the death — possibly by suicide — of Mr Xi’s sister and downplaying the persecution of their father, a major party figure later rehabilitated and restored to high office, like Deng.
In 1975 Mr Xi won approval to return to Beijing, where he studied Marxist theory and ideological and political education at university.
He took a rural posting and rose higher with capable management of the coastal province of Fujian, near Taiwan. His first marriage ended in divorce, and his wife is now Peng Liyuan, a singer.
China still lacks real friends, but its massive economy means that Mr Xi gets plenty of sleepover invitations, from the White House to Buckingham Palace. While some in China see the UK as a faded world leader, Mr Xi’s state visit may excite more Chinese interest than most of his trips.
China’s citizens are regularly reminded of their “century of humiliation” by foreigners, notably the British who took Hong Kong. Now the UK, keen for Chinese investment in areas such as railways and nuclear power stations, courts the PRC, whose state narrative is the “China dream” of rejuvenation, strength and global respect — delivered by the party and Mr Xi himself.