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Chinese Leader Xi Jinping’s Rise and Rule

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at an event to introduce new members of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022. (AP)
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at an event to introduce new members of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022. (AP)
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Chinese Leader Xi Jinping’s Rise and Rule

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at an event to introduce new members of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022. (AP)
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at an event to introduce new members of the Politburo Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022. (AP)

Chinese President Xi Jinping, the son of a communist revolutionary leader, was a victim of the Cultural Revolution and a provincial chief who promoted economic growth before ascending to the very top a decade ago.

On Sunday, China's 69-year-old leader secured a widely expected third term as general secretary of the ruling Communist Party, paving the way for him to remain in power for at least five more years — and possibly longer.

In his first decade in power, he tightened state control over the economy and society and promoted a more muscular foreign and defense policy, all while establishing himself as one of the most powerful leaders in China's modern history.

Early years

June 15, 1953: Born in Beijing, the son of Xi Zhongxun, a senior Communist Party official and former guerrilla commander in the civil war that brought the communists to power in 1949.

1969-75: At the age of 15, Xi is among many educated urban youths sent to live and work in poor rural villages during the Cultural Revolution, a period of social upheaval launched by then-leader Mao Zedong.

1975-79: Returns to Beijing to study chemical engineering at prestigious Tsinghua University.

1979-82: Joins military as aide in Central Military Commission and Defense Ministry.

Regional leader

1982-85: Assigned as deputy and then leader of the Communist Party in Zhengding county, south of Beijing in Hebei province.

1985: Begins 17-year stint in coastal Fujian province, a manufacturing hub, as vice mayor of the city of Xiamen.

1987: Marries Peng Liyuan, a popular singer in the People’s Liberation Army’s song and dance troupe. They have one daughter. An earlier marriage for Xi fell apart after three years.

2000-2002: Governor of Fujian province.

2002: Transferred to neighboring Zhejiang province, where he is appointed party chief, a post that outranks governor in the Chinese system.

March 2007: Appointed party chief of Shanghai but stays only a few months.

October 2007: Joins national leadership as one of nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the top leadership of the Communist Party.

March 2008: Named vice president of China.

August 2011: Xi hosts then-Vice President Joe Biden on the latter's visit to China, nearly a decade before Biden becomes US president.

National leader

November 2012: Replaces Chinese President Hu Jintao as general secretary of the Communist Party, the top party position.

March 2013: Starts first five-year term as president of China.

2013-2014: China begins reclaiming land in the South China Sea to build islands, some with runways and other infrastructure, pushing its territorial claims to disputed areas in the vital waterway.

2017: China launches a harsh crackdown on the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in the Xinjiang region after extremist attacks. Mass detentions and human rights abuses draw international condemnation and accusations of genocide.

October 2017: The party enshrines his ideology, known as “Xi Jinping Thought,” in its constitution as he starts a second five-year term as leader. This symbolically elevates him to Mao's level as a leader whose ideology is identified by his name.

March 2018: China's legislature abolishes a two-term limit on the presidency, signaling Xi's desire to stay in power for more than 10 years.

July 2018: The United States, under President Donald Trump, imposes tariffs on Chinese imports, starting a trade war. China retaliates with tariffs on US goods.

June-November 2019: Massive protests demanding greater democracy paralyze Hong Kong. Xi's government responds by imposing a national security law in mid-2020 that quashes dissent in the city.

January 2020: China locks down the city of Wuhan as a new virus sparks what will become the COVID-19 pandemic.

September 2020: Xi announces in a video speech to the UN General Assembly that China aims to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

December 2020: Authorities announce an anti-monopoly investigation into e-commerce giant Alibaba, the start of a crackdown on China's high-flying tech companies.

August 2022: China launches missiles and deploys warships and fighter jets in major military exercises around Taiwan following the visit of a senior US lawmaker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to the self-governing island that China claims as its territory.

October 2022: Xi starts a third five-year term as Communist Party leader, breaking with recent precedent that limited leaders to two terms.

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Early US Intelligence Report Suggests US Strikes Only Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Months

A woman walks past a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (AFP)
A woman walks past a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (AFP)
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Early US Intelligence Report Suggests US Strikes Only Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Months

A woman walks past a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (AFP)
A woman walks past a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (AFP)

A US intelligence report suggests that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after US strikes and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment.

The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran's nuclear facilities. According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The White House rejected the DIA assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong.” On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “New intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated: “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordo, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do.”

Gabbard’s office declined to respond to questions about the details of the new intelligence, or whether it would be declassified and released publicly.

The office of the director of national intelligence coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries.

The DIA did not respond to requests for comment.

The US has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear program entirely, but some experts fear that the US strikes and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities could push Tehran toward developing a functioning weapon.

The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the US strikes and survived, and it found that Iran’s centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people.

At the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant, where US B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found. The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo.

The White House pushes back Trump defended his characterization of the strike's impact.

“It was obliteration, and you’ll see that,” Trump told reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He said the intelligence was “very inconclusive” and described media outlets as “scum” for reporting on it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also at the NATO summit, said there would be an investigation into how the intelligence assessment leaked and dismissed it as “preliminary” and “low confidence.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “These leakers are professional stabbers.”

The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday.

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the US and Israeli strikes have “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” It did not give evidence to back up its claim.

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he has read damage assessment reports from US intelligence and other nations, reiterated Tuesday that the strikes had deprived Iran of the ability to develop a weapon and called it outrageous that the US assessment was shared with reporters.

“It’s treasonous so it ought to be investigated,” Witkoff said on Fox News Channel.

Trump has said in comments and posts on social media in recent days, including Tuesday, that the strike left the sites in Iran “totally destroyed” and that Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu said Tuesday in a televised statement: “For dozens of years I promised you that Iran would not have nuclear weapons and indeed ... we brought to ruin Iran’s nuclear program." He said the US joining Israel was “historic” and thanked Trump.

Outside experts had suspected Iran had likely already hidden the core components of its nuclear program as it stared down the possibility that American bunker-buster bombs could be used on its nuclear sites.

Bulldozers and trucks visible in satellite imagery taken just days before the strikes have fueled speculation among experts that Iran may have transferred its half-ton stockpile of enriched uranium to an unknown location. And the incomplete destruction of the nuclear sites could still leave the country with the capacity to spin up weapons-grade uranium and develop a bomb.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched significant quantities of uranium beyond the levels required for any civilian use. The US and others assessed prior to the US strikes that Iran’s theocratic leadership had not yet ordered the country to pursue an operational nuclear weapon, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so.

Vice President JD Vance said in a Monday interview on Fox News Channel that even if Iran is still in control of its stockpile of 408.6 kilograms (900.8 pounds) of enriched uranium, which is just short of weapons-grade, the US has cut off Iran's ability to convert it to a nuclear weapon.

“If they have 60% enriched uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90%, and, further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success. That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term,” Vance said.

Approximately 42 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb if enriched further to 90%, according to the UN nuclear watchdog.

What experts say Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi informed UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on June 13 — the day Israel launched its military campaign against Iran — that Tehran would “adopt special measures to protect our nuclear equipment and materials.”

American satellite imagery and analysis firm Maxar Technologies said its satellites photographed trucks and bulldozers at the Fordo site beginning on June 19, three days before the Americans struck.

Subsequent imagery “revealed that the tunnel entrances into the underground complex had been sealed off with dirt prior to the US airstrikes,” said Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar. “We believe that some of the trucks seen on 19 June were carrying dirt to be used as part of that operation.”

Some experts say those trucks could also have been used to move out Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

“It is plausible that Iran moved the material enriched to 60% out of Fordo and loaded it on a truck,” said Eric Brewer, a former US intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Iran could also have moved other equipment, including centrifuges, he said, noting that while enriched uranium, which is stored in fortified canisters, is relatively easy to transport, delicate centrifuges are more challenging to move without inflicting damage.

Apart from its enriched uranium stockpile, over the past four years Iran has produced the centrifuges key to enrichment without oversight from the UN nuclear watchdog.

Iran also announced on June 12 that it has built and will activate a third nuclear enrichment facility. IAEA chief Grossi said the facility was located in Isfahan, a place where Iran has several other nuclear sites. After being bombarded by both the Israelis and the Americans, it is unclear if, or how quickly, Isfahan’s facilities, including tunnels, could become operational.

But given all of the equipment and material likely still under Iran’s control, this offers Tehran “a pretty solid foundation for a reconstituted covert program and for getting a bomb,” Brewer said.

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan policy center, said that “if Iran had already diverted its centrifuges,” it can “build a covert enrichment facility with a small footprint and inject the 60% gas into those centrifuges and quickly enrich to weapons grade levels.”

But Brewer also underlined that if Iran launched a covert nuclear program, it would do so at a disadvantage, having lost to Israeli and American strikes vital equipment and personnel that are crucial for turning the enriched uranium into a functional nuclear weapon.