Special to WorldTribune.com

By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com

President Xi Jinping has surprised party cadres and members by holding a high-profile celebration of the 100th birthday of his late father Xi Zhongxun, a former Politburo member and vice-premier noted for his liberal political views.

It is against the Confucianist tradition of humility and propriety to use public resources to embellish one’s pedigree.

Given the fact that Xi has alienated the party’s liberal wing – as well as most intellectuals – by his all-out resuscitation of Maoist norms, however, the president is unabashedly using his father’s liberal credentials to burnish his own tarnished image.

Xi, who now heads the powerful Gang of Princelings (a reference to the offspring of party elders) within the Chinese Communist Party, has also tried to use the occasion to unify disparate cliques within this grouping of “red aristocrats.”

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  Confucianist, Gang of Princelings, Maoist, Xi honors both his liberal father and Mao in bid to unify the splintered ‘Red aristocracy’, Xi Zhongxun