Xi Jinping's law degree questioned as claims he was 'helped'
Critics of the Communist party allege that Xi Jinping was granted a post-graduate doctorate by the prestigious Tsinghua University merely to burnish his credentials for political leadership. Source: AFP A LEAKED document from China has raised embarrassing questions over the validity of a law degree awarded to its leader, Xi Jinping, in 2002 at a crucial moment in his rise to rule over the country of 1.3bn people. Analysis of Xi's unpublished dissertation for the degree, a copy of which was handed to The Sunday Times in Hong Kong last week, lends weight to claims among Chinese academics that he used others to help with his thesis. The contents of the work, A Tentative Study on China's Rural Marketisation, also appeared to have little to do with the discipline of law. Critics of the Communist party allege that Mr Xi, 60, was granted the post-graduate doctorate by the prestigious Tsinghua University merely to burnish his credentials for political leadership. Official records show that an influential faculty member at Tsinghua, Chen Xi, a contemporary of Xi's, soon afterwards received rapid promotion to high government and party rank. Literary scholars found several areas in the 161-page dissertation that would raise academic eyebrows - among them what seemed a lack of original research by Mr Xi. They said it appeared to combine extracts from government reports with translations from foreign works in a leaden Marxist style, suggesting it was drafted by a group and finalised by the author. In the text, Mr Xi thanks three academics and a researcher "for giving me great help while I was writing the paper". It cites as sources 97 books in Chinese and 26 in English. Mr Xi's official biography says the degree was granted through an "on the job" programme in Marxist theory and ideological education for work done between 1998 and 2002. In this period Mr Xi held two arduous full-time jobs, ruling 35m people as governor of Fujian province and serving as deputy leader of the province's Communist party. "How did he have time to do this, even if he did not eat, drink or sleep?" said Jin Guantao, an expert in elite politics at Taiwan Political University in Taipei, according to the Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily. Like many others, Mr Xi missed his secondary schooling when banished to the countryside in 1969-75 during Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution. He later earned a chemistry degree as a "worker-peasant-soldier" student - a category that recognised his strong political background but carries low prestige. As Mr Xi climbed the ladder to power his lack of a credible higher education became a weakness that had to be remedied. The law degree solved his problem. Mr Xi has never made any public comment on the controversy. The Sunday Times | 
