A revealing biography of the enigmatic ruler of China The Red Emperor presents an eye-opening portrait of Xi Jinping, the man who presides over 1.4 billion people and the second largest economy on earth. Born a 'princeling' to one of Communist China's ruling families, the young Xi was exiled to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution where he toiled in the fields of Shaanxi province in the impoverished heart of China. Returning to Beijing once his family's fortunes had been restored, he got a privileged insider's job at the defence ministry then built a power base working in the booming provinces of the coast. In 2012, following the spectacular fall of his rival Bo Xilai, Xi Jinping became the leader of China. In a compulsively readable narrative, veteran foreign correspondent and China expert Michael Sheridan takes the reader from the poor, isolated country of Xi's youth to the military and economic superpower of today. He reveals how the Chinese elite groomed Xi as a manager only to get a dictator who is set to rule for life. In the new China, family mafias struggle for power amid murder, corruption and sex scandals as ministers and generals vanish in purges.

No one is safe in Xi's techno-security state. Above it all, Xi is an absolute ruler whose word is law on everything from war and peace to the ruthless campaign against Covid-19. He aims to dominate world trade, to defeat Western democracy and to make China the supreme power in the East. A loner and a risk-taker, he is the most consequential leader of our time. 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.