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This book analyses the ideology that China's leader Xi Jinping has crafted during his decade in power. China's political system and domestic and foreign policies have, between 2012 and 2022, become more defined by the political thought of Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader of the Chinese Communist Party since the time of Mao Zedong. Today, Xi's China is embroiled in superpower rivalry with the United States and its allies. Therefore, ongoing ideological transformation in the People's Republic is destined to have global repercussions. Yet surprisingly, the ideological mission of Xi Jinping is poorly understood. Based on analysis of Xi Jinping's collected speeches, the book argues that China's new state ideology is constructed around the three key concepts of loyalty, discipline, and greatness. Xi's mission is about ideological re-orientation and re-activation, as well as organizational innovation, seeking to frame China's “national self” as a collective unit under one political banner and one leader. However, despite the monumental Party-state effort to boost the new ideology and state-scripted “moral careers”, the book contends that Xi Jinping cannot take for granted that political and patriotic loyalty will forever trump the formation of “disloyal moral careers” in society.

This book traces ideological trends in China through a range of historical and comparative perspectives, spanning the ancient belief systems of Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism to political ideologies of the present day.Chapters in this edited volume are divided into four parts: traditional Chinese ideology, ideology of the Republic, Maoism as an ideology and post Mao ideology, zoning in on specific historical periods from the Qing and Republic periods to the reform era, as well as the period after the founding of the PRC – through which Mao Zedong's political thought is notably discussed from the perspective of epistemology and the global impact of Maoism. Key topics include Sun Yat-sen as the Father of the Republic, Li Dazhao, the early Marxist theoretician, Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist Fascism, Liang Qichao's emotional appeals through liberal political discourse, Jiang Zemin's theory of ‘Three Represents'de-emphasising the Marxist concept of class, Hu Jintao's theory of ‘Harmonious Society'and Xi Jinping's political thought. Contributions from world-leading scholars take both comparative and critical approaches, examining not only how studies of ideology are relevant, but how Chinese ideologies have retained their own characteristics distinct to the West. As the first comprehensive study of this subject in the English language, Chinese Ideology will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy, political science, history, and Asian studies more broadly.