Xi Jinping rules over 1.4 billion people and the second biggest economy on earth. He commands huge armed forces and runs a technology programme meant to dominate the globe. His ambition is to take the place of the United States and to change the world order.

Xi’s life story is full of drama: plots, purges, murders, a power struggle and a pandemic. The book, based on new sources, leads the reader from the poor, isolated China of the 1950s to the modern economic and military juggernaut of today. It reveals how the Chinese elite groomed Xi as a manager only to get a dictator, a man who has made himself into a new version of Mao and who dares not give up power.

Drawing on intimate stories from the closed world of China’s leading families and two decades of first-hand reporting, Michael Sheridan sheds an intriguing new light on the history and politics of modern China. The book reveals that behind the façade of the Chinese Communist Party there is a modern dynasty and a new emperor.