Victor Shih

When Xi was in Shanghai, he was basically the very senior level secretary who would support whoever the party secretary of Shanghai was.

And he worked under three different party secretaries of Shanghai,

supported Xi Jinping for one year.

For some reason, Xi Jinping just trusted him absolutely after that.

And it's a mystery.

And, you know, I've looked at all the open literature.

I've asked people in Shanghai.

Nobody knows why that's the case.

I mean, almost certainly, I think one reason is that he was gathering a lot of information about the other leaders of Shanghai and sending all that information to Xi Jinping.

to basically let him know, because at that time, as you know, the previous leader of China, Jiang Zemin, had a very big stronghold in Shanghai.

So basically, Xi Jinping had to sort of break that apart before he could assert control over Shanghai.

Ding Xuesheng likely was one of the people who sent all this necessary information to Xi Jinping in order for him to do that.

But beyond that, I mean, lots of people do that for Xi Jinping, truth be told.

So beyond that, what else has he done for the big boss to earn his trust, I think is a big mystery.

But the manifested outcome is that Xi trusts him a great deal.

Because in 2013, he was promoted to Beijing to be the second-in-command in his personal office, handling all the flows of data in and out of the desk of Xi Jinping.

So that's a very important position.

He became the first-in-command a couple years later.

He took control over the entire apparatus.

that govern Xi Jinping's day-to-day life back in 2017.