Everything we know about the president of China's childhood is terrifying
Xi, who took power in 2013, is known for being an incredibly private man of few words. What little we do know about him and how he grew up, though, is terrifying stuff.
The New York Times painted a harrowing picture of those days in a profile of Xi's teen years.
Xi's father was a high-ranking Communist Party propaganda minister back in the days of Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China. At the beginning of his life this afforded Xi a bunch of luxuries - a fancy school, for example.
But everything changed during China's 'Cultural Revolution,' when Mao decided to do away with party elites. Xi's father was accused supporting a book Mao hated in 1962 and sent to work at a factory.
Five years later, Xi's father was accused of staring at the Berlin Wall with a pair of binoculars during a visit to East Germany years before, according to The New Yorker, and things got worse.
It was around this time that the world turned on Xi Jinping as well. He was considered the child of a "black gang" because his father had been purged. The fancy school he attended became a target for those who believed in the Cultural Revolution.
A classmate said that he and Xi were the "blackest" in the class, and the bullying and torment was terrible. Xi's older sister was eventually "persecuted to death." According to the NYT, experts think that means she committed suicide.
The Revolutionary Guards chased Xi, threatened to shoot him, and publicly shamed him.
From the NYT: