Sarah Lande vividly remembers the start of her unlikely friendship with Xi Jinping.
It was 1985 in Muscatine, Iowa. At the time, Xi held a low-level job in the Chinese Communist Party and was part of a small delegation sent to rural America.
Working at Iowa's 'sister state' organisation, Muscatine resident Lande helped coordinate the two-week trip and spent time with Xi.
"He was curious about everything, he was almost giddy and happy … And of course, China was just opening up, so we were curious. [There were] good vibes of trust," she tells ABC RN's Take Me To Your Leader.
Lande recalls how the 31-year-old Xi stayed at a neighbour's home, in a vacated teen's room with "Star Wars [paraphernalia] on the wall".
"We just treated him like an everyman," she says.
"The story came to us that the night before these five gentlemen came to Iowa, [Xi's] father held a dinner for them in their home. And he said [to them]: 'Go to America and learn how to feed our people'."
The visit was the start of a lifelong friendship between Xi and Lande, which continues to this day. But much has changed since that first meeting in 1985.
Xi rose through the CCP ranks, becoming China's leader in 2012, with both the party and the country now firmly in his grip.
His brand of nationalism and control dominate nearly all areas of life there. And China's relations with the West have tanked.
Stories from Xi's past – like that of Lande's – offer insight on how he became one of the most powerful leaders of our time.
'A huge impact on our life'
According to Professor Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Xi is consequential not just for China, but for all of us.
"Whether we like him or not, we will have to acknowledge that he is going to have a huge impact on our life," he says.
"China is now so integrated into the rest of the world, what changes in China – for better or for worse – will impact upon us."
Yet Xi's ascent to the top was a rocky one — and far from assured.
He was born in Beijing in 1953, just a few years after Mao Zedong's communist revolution culminated with the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
Sue-Lin Wong, China correspondent at the Economist, explains: "His father [Xi Zhongxun] and mother [Qi Xin] were revolutionaries. Xi Jinping's father fought alongside Mao Zedong and is considered one of the founding fathers of modern China."
Wong says Xi Zhongxun "raised his children, including Xi Jinping, to believe that they would inherit the Chinese Communist Party revolution, that they, too, would be revolutionaries".
"While Xi Jinping's father's generation founded modern China, it would be Xi Jinping's generation that would make China bigger and stronger."
Wong says Xi grew up "in immense privilege, at a time when millions of Chinese were living in abject poverty in the 1950s".
"He lived in a fancy compound and had nannies, housekeepers, security guards and went to the top boarding school."
Because of this, Xi's father tried to instil the spirit of the revolution in his children by running an austere household, as a brutal disciplinarian.
Wong points to one story where Xi's father would make his son "wear hand-me-downs from his older sisters", which Xi hated.
Father's fall from grace
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Xi's father Xi Zhongxun went up the party ranks. But in 1962, he had a huge fall from grace, after supporting writing that was deemed "anti-party".
"He was dismissed … and labelled as an anti-party element and sent to work in a factory," says Dr Chongyi Feng, an associate professor in China studies at the University of Technology, Sydney.
This had a tremendous impact on the nine-year-old Xi, who became ostracised at school because of his family name.
"I think that Xi Jinping actually developed a very strong inferiority complex from that because … he was looked down on by his peers," Feng says.
He says that inferiority complex persists.
"When you look at his visits to the outside world – to France, to Britain, to the US – he kept reciting a very long list of book titles to demonstrate his knowledge. That comes from his inferiority complex."
Living in 'cave homes'
In 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution to "crush" remnants of capitalism and reassert his control.
It was a bloody catastrophe, which Wong sums up as: "One of [China's] most traumatic periods of history".
"Mao Zedong … unleashed mobs loyal to him to beat, torture and kill anyone who was considered an enemy," she says.
"Xi Jinping talks about how he was attacked by these mobs … He genuinely feared for his life."
Along with millions of other Chinese people of his generation, he was sent to the countryside and forced to work there.
Wong says Mao wanted "to 'educate' privileged urban youth in the ways of the peasants, in the ways of the countryside".
Xi spent seven years in Liangjiahe, a village in central China, where he worked on an agricultural commune.
During these years, the president-to-be lived in "cave homes", or very basic dwellings cut into rock (these sites are now tourist drawcards for Xi devotees).
Feng says the Cultural Revolution "damaged a whole generation".
Doubling down
After this traumatic period, many Chinese people wanted nothing to do with the Chinese Communist Party or even China itself – with scores leaving for countries like Australia.
But Xi Jinping took a different approach.
"What made Xi Jinping different, was he decided to double down on the party. He remembered the lessons his father had taught him as a kid," Wong says.
"He decided it wasn't that the Chinese Communist Party in and of itself was bad, it was that … the party had lost control [of the country]. And if Xi Jinping ever rose to the top of the party, he would make sure the party never lost control again."
Feng says that Xi applied to join the Communist Party ten times, "and later, at long last, through the back door … he was accepted".
Rise to the top
Over two decades, Xi advanced his political career through various county, municipal and provincial leadership positions.
"He decided to go to this poor, rural county [Zhengding County in Hebei] and start at one of the lowest rungs of the party and work his way up," Wong says.
Xi's 1985 trip to Iowa occurred during his climb up the party ladder – with his people skills on display, despite a wide cultural chasm.
Sarah Lande recalls: "He had a smile and a warmth about him that sort of ingratiated him with everyone."
Wong says Xi "eventually makes it to the Party Secretary of Shanghai. And then he's promoted to the Vice President of China … [and also] simultaneously, First Secretary of the Secretariat, which is like being White House Chief of Staff".
In 2012, Xi became head of the Chinese Communist Party and then President of China.
Ever since, he's solidified power on a widespread scale.
"Because of the way he has purged so many people and instilled fear throughout the party and throughout the country … it's hard to say that there are many other factions now apart from the Xi Jinping faction," Wong says.
"Since he's become leader, [his] rhetoric has become much more extreme and much more aggressive," she adds.
Over the years, he's silenced critics, locked up Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups, tightened Beijing's grip on Hong Kong, and promised to reunite with Taiwan by force if necessary. All the while, his propaganda machine has built a cult of personality not seen since Mao.
But ultimately, is Xi Jinping's loyalty to the Communist Party or to the people of China?
"To the Communist Party," Wong says.
"Xi Jinping's father is buried at a site next to a quote from Mao Zedong, which reads: 'The party comes first'."
'Like Stalin, like Hitler'
At all levels, Xi has threatened and crushed those who don't tow the party line.
Feng, who is originally from China and moved to Australia in the 1990s, knows this firsthand.
In 2017, he went on a research trip back to China to interview lawyers and others with "liberal or democratic aspirations".
But during the trip he was detained and interrogated by authorities.
"The secret police got a hold of me and tried to block me from leaving China," he says.
After pressure from the Australian government – and to the great relief of his family and friends – he was released after a week and returned to Australia.
Feng says Xi is "absolutely" a dictator, who has turned China into an "authoritarian" society.
"The outside world has come to realise that this is a dictator … like Stalin, like Hitler, like Chairman Mao," he says.
"But we Chinese – those who have liberal ideals, who [support] human rights – have experienced that for the last decade."
The future
Last October, Xi secured an unprecedented third term, increasing speculation he may be leader for life.
"He's built these incredibly powerful censorship, propaganda and surveillance machines. The country has become much more authoritarian, much more closed off, much less free than it was when he took power," Wong says.
"And I think, unfortunately, that's the direction that we will see China continue along."
"When I speak to people on the ground there, amongst an urban, educated group, there is a real sense of pessimism, disappointment, anger, frustration and fear."
So how does Sarah Lande, Xi's "lifelong friend" from Iowa, feel about the many negative descriptions of Xi?
"Of course, I wish it weren't so. I'm just sad [with these descriptions]," she says.
"Maybe he kept thinking he needed to control [the country] to keep the peace and the power. But once you learn to control everything, you really seem to want more."
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