She’s the only child of the world’s second most powerful leader, but few people know her name.
We only know a little about Xi Jinping’s daughter, except that she’s married to folk singer Peng Liyuan.
The 27-year-old was born on June 27, 1992, and studied French at high school.
The China Times says her grandfather, Communist revolutionary and former state official Xi Zhongxun, called her “Xiao Muzi,” meaning “innocent and decent.”
According to a 2012 profile in a Taiwanese newspaper, she is “easygoing and likes reading and fashion. “
After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the 16-year-old asked her school for time off to help with relief efforts.
Peng said she was not worried about her daughter’s safety. “My daughter should go to the frontline to help because so many people died, and the disaster was huge. She worked hard for seven days as a volunteer. She learned a lot and made friends. “People in Sichuan are nice, strong, and kind.”
Her father protects her privacy by keeping her surrounded by Chinese bodyguards.
Like Vladimir Putin with his “secret” daughters, the Chinese leader protects her from the outside world – often using the Communist dictatorship’s internet censorship powers.
She went to the US in 2010 to study at Harvard under a pseudonym. In 2012, few people had heard of her.
The Washington Post said she was at Harvard in May but didn’t say much else. They said she was quiet and studious.
“She is a bookworm, quiet, and studious,” a Chinese writer friend told the newspaper.
She was said to be devoted to her studies and different from another prominent Chinese Harvard student, Bo Guagua, the son of Chinese politician Bo Xilai.
The story was a big deal on Chinese social media, even though it didn’t have many details. A photo of the article was shared on Weibo, which got past the censors because it was an image.
The University of Hong Kong’s monitoring service, Weiboscope, reported that the image and subsequent re-posts of the story were banned. This was likely due to awkward questions about how the Chinese President could afford to send his daughter to one of the world’s most expensive universities.
Xi Mingze graduated in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and English. She returned to Beijing.
Kenji Minemura, an Asahi Shimbun correspondent who attended her commencement ceremony, said that only a few faculty members and close friends knew her true identity during her time at Harvard.
in 2015, she made her first public appearance since her father took power in 2013. She went to the remote village of Yanan in Liangjiahe, Shaanxi province, to offer Lunar New Year greetings to the locals.
The President started his political career in the 1970s after being sent there for six years. Yanan is called the “cradle of the red revolution.”
Since then, Xi Mingze has kept a low profile. As a member of the youngest generation of the “red nobility,” it’s unclear if she will enter public life.