text: Professor Shambaugh is an internationally recognized authority and author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia, with a strong interest in the European Union and transatlantic issues. 
   
   Before joining the faculty at George Washington, he held the positions of Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London's School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) and Editor of The China Quarterly. He also previously served as an analyst on the staff of the National Security Council East Asia Bureau and the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence & Research (1976-78). He was also a nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution (1998-2015), previously directed the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1986-87), served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (2009-2015), and has been elected a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Asia-Pacific Council, and other public policy and scholarly organizations. He is a recipient of research grants from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, German Marshall Fund, British Academy, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and other philanthropic bodies. He has been appointed a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2002-03), an Honorary Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (2008–), a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of World Economics & Politics in Beijing (2009-10), and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the S. Ranjaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore (2017). Professor Shambaugh has also been a visiting scholar or professor at universities in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Italy, India, Japan, Russia, and Taiwan. He is also a frequent contributor to the international media, serves on a number of editorial boards, and has been a consultant to various governments, research institutions, foundations, and private corporations. 
   
   Professor Shambaugh is a prolific author, having published more than 30 books and 300 articles. ||||| Propaganda officials warn state media off using moniker after push to portray leader as man of the people appears to backfire 
   
   Chinese propaganda chiefs have reportedly ordered state-controlled media to refrain from using the nickname “Big Daddy Xi” to refer to the president. 
   
   
   
   Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012 the epithet has been at the centre of an energetic push to portray the Communist party leader as an omnipotent people’s president. 
   
   
   
   An entire genre of “Big Daddy Xi”-themed songs has sprung up, fuelling fears that he is attempting to build a Mao-like personality cult. 
   
   
   
   Singing Xi's praises: chorus of Chinese pop songs celebrate president Read more 
   
   However, China’s official news agency, Xinhua, and the leading 21st Century Business Herald newspaper have received instructions to steer clear of the nickname, Bloomberg reported. 
   
   One Xinhua journalist told the Guardian the news group had become cautious in its use of the nickname “Xi Dada” – which translates as Big Daddy or Uncle Xi – although they had not seen a specific written instruction to avoid the term. 
   
   
   
   The moniker has not appeared on Xinhua’s website since 27 April but did show up in a 1 May story on another party-run news website with the headline: “What Big Daddy Xi said at the Communist party’s Central Party School conference.” 
   
   
   
   It is unclear why Beijing’s propaganda officials have decided to step back from Xi’s nickname. Experts believe it may hint at growing discomfort – both in and outside China – about how the leader is portrayed as a Mao-style autocrat. 
   
   In recent weeks, Chinese officials have expressed discomfort over the perception that a cult of personality is growing around their leader. The website of the Economist was blocked in China after a cartoon on its front page showed Xi sporting a Mao-style Zhongshan suit beside the headline: “Beware the cult of Xi”. 
   
   Writing in the New York Review of Books this month, Columbia University’s Prof Andrew J Nathan accused Xi of bringing back “many of the most dangerous features of Mao’s rule: personal dictatorship, enforced ideological conformity, and arbitrary persecution”. 
   
   Kerry Brown, the author of CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping, said the apparent move to purge Xi’s nickname from headlines was a possible admission that China’s portrayal of its leader had backfired. 
   
   While spin doctors had hoped to paint Xi as a respected globe-trotting world leader, Brown said, large portions of the international community and media now viewed Xi as “a big, big dictator”. 
   
   “That’s a big-time propaganda failure,” he said. “I can imagine that in their five-minute-a-month meeting with Xi Jinping, the head of publicity got told: ‘Whose bright idea was that [nickname]? Send him or her to Gansu [in China’s far west]!’” 
   
   
   
   Brown added: “They don’t want [China] to be seen as an autocracy. So this interpretation of the outside world as a Xi Jinping autocracy must be driving them absolutely nuts.” 
   
   'Rule the party strictly!': Chinese president 'Big Daddy Xi' makes rap debut Read more 
   
   Roderick MacFarquhar, a Harvard University China expert, said the apparent abandonment of the nickname was unlikely to signal a change in direction for the authoritarian leader, who has suggested is the country’s most powerful since Mao. 
   
   
   
   “My own feeling is that he may be tweaking the way he presents himself but I don’t think that he is changing his fundamental principles. [His belief remains] that if there is going to be a ‘Chinese dream’ it has got to be Xi Jinping who is in charge,” MacFarquhar said. 
   
   
   
   “I don’t know whether his spies or informants have told him that ‘Xi Dada’ has made him look rather ridiculous … but there is some talk that the propaganda chief may have been overdoing it deliberately, and maybe Xi Jinping fell for that.” 
   
   Qiao Mu, an outspoken journalism professor from the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said he was unaware of an explicit directive to avoid the nickname but said it was possible verbal orders had been given to tone down the intense media focus on Xi. The academic said he would welcome such a move. 
   
   
   
   “The members of the politburo should all be equal. So why don’t we have a ‘Big Daddy Wang’ and a ‘Big Daddy Zhang’, as well as a ‘Big Daddy Xi’?” 
   
   
   
   MacFarquhar admitted the inner workings of Chinese politics were so opaque it was hard to grasp the significance of the move. “I think there are all sorts of currents around Chinese leaders at the moment and it is difficult to tell who is on whose side,” he said. 
   
   Additional reporting by Christy Yao. ||||| Rating is available when the video has been rented. 
   
   This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. ||||| It was the dream of pop stardom that convinced Zhou Dandan, a belly dancing instructor from Hubei province, to pen her paean to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. 
   
   For Tang Jianyu it was a desire to canonise her country’s commander-in-chief. “He is the ideal husband for any girl,” gushed Tang, a 39-year-old amateur musician from Wuxi in Zhejiang province. 
   
   As Xi moves into his fourth year as president of the world’s most populous nation, the two musicians are part of a growing chorus of Chinese minstrels singing the praises of the man they call “Xi Dada” which translates as Uncle or Big Daddy Xi. 
   
   A rapidly expanding list of pop hits celebrating the president includes tracks such as Our Xi Dada, The Idol Xi Dada, If You Want to Marry, Marry Somebody Like Xi Dada, China has its Xi Dada, Be a Man Like Xi Dada and, best known of all, Xi Dada Loves Peng Mama (a reference to China’s first lady, Peng Liyuan). 
   
   “I want to sing Big Daddy Xi’s praises,” explained Zhou, 29, who is from the city of Xiangyang and uses the stage name “A Yi Mi La”. “There are millions of reports telling Xi’s story so it struck me I should write a song about him.” 
   
   She added: “I think he is a very ambitious [leader]. He is very bold but at the same time cautious.” 
   
   Part of the fast-growing Xi repertoire seems to be genuinely spontaneous tributes to a leader whose high-profile anti-corruption campaign has won him many fans. 
   
   Other works – such as a big budget television song and dance extravaganza that was reportedly bankrolled by the government of Hunan province – appear part of a coordinated propaganda push to bolster Xi’s standing. 
   
   “We are in your hearts! You are in our hearts! You love us, the people! We the people deeply love you!” the performers of that state-backed song chant. 
   
   Some detect a troubling attempt to build a Mao-esque personality cult around Xi. 
   
   Carl Minzner, an expert in Chinese governance at New York’s Fordham University, said Xi’s time in office had seen an increasingly intense and fawning focus on the Communist party chief in the media and some sections of the arts. 
   
   “You put all those things together … and it’s a budding cult of personality. And the fear about that is that this has echoes that go back to the Maoist era and you just wonder how that might get used,” he said. 
   
   In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the revered China scholar David Shambaugh said: “I thought the Chinese system had moved beyond one-man-rule and personality cults.” 
   
   He added: “Xi has obviously reversed this carefully crafted norm, and I do not think it is good for China. This is not the 1960s.” 
   
   Daniel Leese, author of Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution, said Xi had a long way to go before emulating Mao’s cult following. However, he too saw hints of a personality cult developing around Xi. 
   
   Unlike the portrayal of Mao Zedong, Xi was not depicted as a god-like figure. “He is not superhuman,” Leese said. 
   
   Rather, propaganda chiefs sought to craft the image of an approachable public servant who boasted both supreme leadership skills and the ability to act as a detached and influential political referee. 
   
   Budding poets are also attempting to get in on the act, including Pu Liye, the author of one recent ode to Xi. “General secretary, my eyes follow in your wake. And in these eyes my verse takes shape,” reads one of the poem’s opening lines. 
   
   Pu, a journalist at the state-run Xinhua news agency, declined to discuss his homage to Xi, which was received with widespread derision on the internet, but he confirmed that he wrote the politically-charged stanzas. 
   
   “I don’t want to say much,” he said. “Is that OK?” 
   
   Additional reporting by Christy Yao ||||| China has become the powerhouse of the world economy, its incredible boom overseen by the elite members of the secretive and all-powerful communist party. But since the election of Xi Jinping as General Secretary, life at the top in China has changed. Under the guise of a corruption crackdown, which has seen his rivals imprisoned, Xi Jinping has been quietly building one of the most powerful leaderships modern China has ever seen. In CEO China, the noted China expert Kerry Brown reveals the hidden story of the rise of the man dubbed the 'Chinese Godfather'. Brown investigates his relationship with his revolutionary father, who was expelled by Mao during the Cultural Revolution, his business dealings and allegiances in China's regional power struggles and his role in the internal battle raging between the old men of the Deng era and the new super-rich 'princelings'. Xi Jinping's China is powerful, aggressive and single-minded and this book will become a must-read for the Western world. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| A push to rein in a popular nickname for Chinese President Xi Jinping signals his image-makers are refining their effort to portray him as a populist hero of the masses. 
   
   In recent weeks, news outlets including the official Xinhua News Agency and the 21st Century Business Herald have been cautioned against using “Xi Dada” in reports and on social media, according to people with knowledge of the matter. 
   
   QuickTake China's Pain Points 
   
   Xinhua employees were told last Friday not to refer to Xi as "Dada," said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal policies. The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission received a similar order for its publications, according to another person. 
   
   Since Xi came to power more than three years ago, the name -- literally Xi Big Big, or Big Daddy Xi in his hometown vernacular -- has proliferated on social media, with videos, songs and poetry praising him as an affable father figure. While that image has helped offset perceptions of his privileged upbringing as the "princeling" son of a revolutionary leader, it’s fueled criticism that the Communist Party was building a new personality cult like the one blamed for political turmoil under Mao Zedong. 
   
   Edicts banning the use of the name by state-controlled media show authorities feel they need to tone down the rhetoric, said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian and political commentator. 
   
   "The deification effort has hit a snag," Zhang said. "The approach was a bit too crude and went overboard, and it met with resistance and even sparked repulsion. The propaganda team needs something different to accentuate Xi’s authority." 
   
   Fan Club 
   
   The name "Xi Dada" dates back to the early days of his ascension as party secretary, with a verified fan club using it in a December 2012 post on the Twitter-like Weibo, according to the website of the party’s People’s Daily newspaper. It’s a term used in Shaanxi, the northwestern region where Xi’s father was born and where the future president toiled as a "sent-down youth" during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. 
   
   Tourists pose for photos at the Qing-Feng Steamed Dumpling Shop in Beijing on Dec. 29, 2013, a day after Xi Jinping dropped in unexpectedly and ordered a simple lunch meal. Photographer: Ng Han Guan/AP Photo 
   
   Xi personally endorsed the nickname in September 2014, when he gave a school teacher visiting Beijing from the southwest province of Guizhou permission to address him by it. "Xi Dada" became a central feature of a social media campaign encouraged by state-controlled media, including smiling cartoons of Xi and photos of his impromptu visit to a Beijing dumpling shop. 
   
   Before Xi’s visit to the U.S. last September, the People’s Daily posted the online video "Who Is Xi Dada?" featuring foreign students expressing admiration for the "cute" leader. A song with the lyric, "If you want to marry, marry someone like Xi Dada, a man full of heroism, with a strong backbone," was circulated widely this year. 
   
   Personality Politics 
   
   Such imagery struck others as a regression to personality politics. Deleted Weibo posts collected by the U.S.-based China Digital Times website include protests against the term, with one August 2014 post describing it as "only used by prostrating lackeys hungry for a daddy." 
   
   Why authorities are now reining in the term is unclear. A 21st Century Business Herald journalist, who was informed about the policy recently and asked not to be identified, said the name was overused and probably seen as counterproductive. While media and government agencies have been told not to use the nickname, there’s no indication it’s being blocked from Internet searches or scrubbed from web pages and social media accounts. 
   
   One contributing factor may have been public criticism of the Lunar New Year Gala in February, an event watched by 690 million people, according to China Central Television. Stages symbolizing steps in Xi’s political career and sequences extolling his leadership of last year’s military parade led Internet users to dismiss the show as politicized and an extended version of CCTV’s state-managed nightly news broadcast. 
   
   "My guess is that Xi doesn’t want his image to be too familiar and warm," said Perry Link, author of "An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics," and a professor of Chinese studies at the University of California at Riverside. "He would rather it be imposing and awe-inspiring, like Mao’s."
target: – It seemed a good idea at the time, but China's propaganda officials are now reportedly walking back one particular attempt to paint President Xi Jinping as the "people's president" by asking state media to stop referring to him by his nickname, per the Guardian. That nickname is "Xi Dada," or "Big Daddy Xi," and while the intent of the moniker was, as another Guardian article frames it, to "craft the image of an approachable public servant," it seems to have instead created a cult of personality that some fear is reminiscent of Mao Zedong. Sources tell Bloomberg that both the Xinhua News Agency and the 21st Century Business Herald were "cautioned" last month about using "Xi Dada," even though the name doesn't appear to have been blocked from online searches or scrubbed online, and no explicit written ban seems to have been issued. The nickname got its start after a fan club started circulating it in 2012, per the People's Daily, and Xi himself gave it the thumbs-up in 2014. There's even a series of songs that have been dedicated to Big Daddy Xi, including "Our Xi Dada" and "Xi Dada Loves Peng Mama" (referring to his wife). "I thought the Chinese system had moved beyond one-man-rule and personality cults," noted Chinese scholar David Shambaugh scoffs to the Guardian. "I do not think it is good for China. This is not the 1960s." Experts speculate it's that sort of thinking that may have caused officials to try to pull back the name, even blocking the Economist website for posting a cartoon Xi in a Mao-style getup next to the headline, "Beware the cult of Xi." Some say Xi is likely not pleased. "That's a big-time propaganda failure," the author of a book on Xi's rise tells the Guardian. "I can imagine that in their five-minute-a-month meeting with Xi Jinping, the head of publicity got told: 'Whose bright idea was that [nickname]? Send him or her to Gansu [in China's far west]!'" (Did Taiwan's president call him "Big Daddy Xi" during their historic handshake?)