Analysing the first 100 days of Xi Jinping

It's difficult to offer any judgments on a new leader just a little over three months into office, or even highlight any definite trends.

But new Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping , who completed his first 100 days in power last Friday, has swiftly consolidated his hold on the ruling party and the military after the once-in-a-decade power transition in November.

He has impressed many by introducing a number of governance changes quickly and differentiating himself from his predecessors in terms of style.

With speeches favouring reform and a high-profile tour of southern China, where the mainland's economic reforms began, he has raised hopes of more liberal party rule. He has urged respect for China's often-ignored constitution, signalled limited judicial reform, taken action to arrest a dozen corrupt senior officials and launched a high-profile attack on official extravagance.

Xi also quickly established himself as a strong commander-in-chief after he assumed the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission at the party congress in November.

Within less than three months, he managed to inspect major military regions and visit the troops of all armed forces of the People's Liberation Army, including land, navy, air forces and strategic missile. Winning the trust of the 2.3 million-strong PLA, Xi wasted no time in assuring them through various speeches that strengthening the military is a centrepiece of his plans to rejuvenate the country.

Xi also seemed to be shaping up to be a firm, if not hawkish, advocate of China's interests on the international stage, even though he hasn't really spelt out his foreign policies yet.

He was widely seen as taking personal charge of Beijing's territorial disputes with Tokyo over the Diaoyu Islands - known as the Senkakus in Japan - and has said China would never "waive its legitimate rights" on the world stage, despite vowing to stick to its peaceful development path.

Reflecting the more open style of leadership he has adopted, Xi allowed his inspection trips to villages to be broadcast live on microblogging websites of the state media. He was seen chatting with farmers, visiting local groceries, and eating a meal in a canteen with soldiers, all contributing to his skyrocketing popularity which was evidenced by an online fan club dedicated to him.

Even before the party's 18th national congress in November, after which Xi succeeded President Hu Jintao as party chief, much of the talk about China's future path centred on whether Xi, the son of a revolutionary leader who helped oversee China's post-Mao economic transformation, could muster the confidence, ideological grounding and power base to push through what reformers see as the policies needed to keep China vigorous and help overcome a growing number of problems.

While analysts have welcomed the swift changes - whether symbolic or meaningful - introduced by the "core" of the party's fifth generation of leaders in the past two months, they caution that it is too early to determine whether Xi will be a reformist leader or a conservative. Many prefer to see it as the beginning of a familiarisation process.

Professor Liu Kang, director of the China Study Centre at Duke University in the United States, said Xi had acted quickly because he was "eager to show that he is a different leader".

As party leader, Xi has delivered three major speeches touching on "the people's livelihoods", "Chinese dream of national rejuvenation" and "governing the country according to the constitution". That has been interpreted by some as his manifesto, ushering in a new era. Others caution that similar talk by former leaders often ended up going nowhere as they failed to implement pledges.

In one recent speech, Xi emphasised that "all citizens are equal before the law" and that "freedom should be guaranteed". He admitted that "supervising mechanisms and systems ensuring the constitution's implementation have not been perfect" and that "judicial and law enforcement problems concerning people's immediate interests are still evident".

He then said that fully implementing the constitution was "the primary task and the basic work in building a socialist nation ruled by law".

Professor Ma Guoxian , director of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics' Public Policy Research Centre, said Xi's speeches had three major themes: calls for the revival of market-oriented reform, which many think stalled under Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao ; measures to attack bureaucratic formalism among officials; and calls for rule of law, which Ma saw as a prerequisite of political reform. "Things are changing fast, which has already brought some hopes rarely seen for years," Ma said.

He said Xi and his Politburo colleagues were practising a new style of work, compared with the party's third and fourth generation of leaders.

"The new leaders are all different in their mindset, behaviour and language," Ma said. The party's third-generation leadership was headed by Jiang Zemin and its fourth by Hu.

Professor Gu Su , a constitutional law specialist at Nanjing University, said Xi's introduction of several dramatic changes in such a short time reflected his reformist bent.

He said Xi's symbolic "southern tour" - harking back to one by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping that set China firmly on the course of reform and opening up - highlighted the new leader's desire to send out a reformist message.

Xi's five-day tour of Guangdong was his first inspection trip since becoming party chief and he used it to make a string of high-profile calls for further reform and opening up.

Gu also cited Xi's emphasis on rule of law, new rules to reform the previously extravagant work style of senior officials, dealing swiftly with corruption allegations against about a dozen senior officials and an obvious change in the style of language used by leaders, replacing rhetoric with down-to-earth talk.

Among a raft of events, analysts see the recent conflict between reporters at Guangzhou's progressive Southern Weekly newspaper and local propaganda officials over censorship as the first real test of how Xi's administration would react to such a confrontational situation.

The defusing of the stand-off, apparently after decisive intervention from the top, is being read as reflecting Xi's acknowledgment of the symbolic importance of the row, with some saying it might also signal that some relaxing of press curbs is on the way.

"The result was a surprisingly mild approach, including mediation by a high-level government official and a vague promise for less censorship in the future," said Douglas Young, a visiting scholar who teaches journalism at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Unlike in the past, when protests were put down with an iron hand, the new leadership chose to negotiate a way out, tacitly giving an assurance that the party propaganda official accused of changing the newspaper's New Year editorial would be replaced later. Young said the unusually tolerant tack could well reflect a new attitude by Xi and the rest of the leadership, who had "come to realise the media can serve many important functions beyond its traditional role as a propaganda machine".

Incidentally, the mainland media recently praised the role of the internet in exposing corrupt officials, claiming it was perfectly in sync with the party's anti-corruption policies and that internet activism now enjoyed the top leadership's endorsement.

Professor Steve Tsang, head of contemporary Chinese studies at the University of Nottingham, said that while Xi had "made the right noises", he was yet to be convinced that Xi would actually deliver on his pledges.

"Overall, he has taken initiatives to project a more positive image, but what he has so far done is not, or at least not yet, convincing," Tsang said.

Zhang Lifan , a political affairs analyst formerly with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Xi was just trying to "build his personal image and win back waning public support of communist rule at a critical juncture".

Zhang added that Xi and his administration would have to deal with many daunting challenges, with China confronting an unstable and complex environment domestically and globally that was unlike anything seen in recent memory. Analysts suggest it is better to hold off on judgment until Xi and his colleague assume full control at the annual session of the National People's Congress next week, when Xi will become president and Li Keqiang premier.