After Deng Xiaoping started the Chinese economic reforms and introduced the concept of collective leadership in the late 1970s, there was no longer a cult of personality around Chinese leaders. When Xi came to power in 2012, he started centralizing power and paved the way for a cult of personality. The Communist Party of China has denied that there was any cult of personality. Xie Chuntao, director of the Central Party School's academic department, claimed the “respect and love” ordinary Chinese felt for Xi was “natural” and “heartfelt” and bore no similarities to a cult of personality.
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Since Xi assumed power in 2012, books, cartoons, pop songs and dance routines have honoured his rule. In 2017, the local government of the Jiangxi province told Christians to replace their pictures of Jesus with Xi Jinping. When he was re-elected in 2017, Xi dominated the front page of the People's Daily compared to previous editions, which emphasized a “collective leadership” model. The political ideology bearing his name, Xi Jinping Thought, was enshrined into the Communist Party's constitution in the 19th National Congress in October 2017 and into the state constitution in 2018. CCTV also showed members of the National People's Congress "crying in happiness" because of Xi Jinping's re-election as President in 2018. Since October 2017, many universities across China have placed “Xi Jinping Thought” at the core of their curricula, the first time since Mao Zedong that a Chinese leader has been accorded similar academic stature. Fudan University revised their charter to remove "academic independence and freedom of thought" and include a "pledge to follow the Communist party's leadership", leading to protests among the students. It also said that Fudan University had to “equip its teachers and employees” with “Xi Jinping Thought”, leading to concerns about the diminishing academic freedom of Fudan. Former inmates in the Xinjiang re-education camps claimed that they were forced to give thanks to the leader by chanting "Long live Xi Jinping." In October 2018, Hunan TV started airing a game show about Xi Jinping and his ideology. In January 2019, Alibaba released a mobile app for studying Xi Jinping Thought named Xuexi Qiangguo. Within two months of its release, it was downloaded 73 million times. Apps such as Toutiao, Tencent, and Sina have been forced to use what has been described as "a super algorithm", where the story at the top "has to be about Xi". and Xi JinpingThere are souvenirs containing Xi Jinping's images throughout shops in China. On 15 June 2020, Xi's birthday, Study Times, the media run by the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China, labelled Xi Jinping Thought as "21st Century Marxism". It claimed that Xi Jinping Thought was the only scientific method to explain the Chinese Miracle in the 21st century. It also claimed to provide the "solution for the modern problems of humankind" and claimed that socialism was better than capitalism. The party's Politburo named Xi Jinping lingxiu, a reverent term for "leader" and a title previously only given to Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong and his immediate successor Hua Guofeng. He is also sometimes called the "Great Helmsman", and in July 2018Li Zhanshu, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, referred to Xi as the "eternal core" of the party. On 25 December 2019, the politburo officially named Xi as "People's Leader", a title only Mao held previously.
