New | President Xi Jinping’s guide on how to be a good county boss, now available in bookstores across China

China’s President Xi Jinping has released a new book, dubbed by state media as “Xi’s manual for county party chiefs”.

Xi has published several books since he took the helm of the country about three years ago. His latest work, titled Becoming a Jiao Yulu-style County Party Chief, is at least his 10th book since 2013.

The announcement of the book’s publication came on Wednesday, the same day state media revealed that more than 5.2 million copies of an earlier work, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, had been sold around the world, making it the bestseller among all books published by Chinese leaders.

Xi’s newest book comprises six speeches he had made since 2012 on how to be a good leader of a county. A column posted on social media by party mouthpiece People’s Daily’s overseas edition hailed the book as a “manual for county party chiefs”.

Jiao Yulu was a county party chief known for his anti-poverty work. According to Communist Party rhetoric, Jiao sacrificed his life in pursuit of the well-being of his county’s residents in the 1960s, dying of liver cancer at age 42. He has since been hailed a political hero, and is frequently mentioned by Xi as a model for the country’s civil servants.

Counties have long been a crucial link in China’s governance. Although they fall on the lower rungs of the state’s administrative hierarchy, county bosses hold almost absolute power over their prefectures and are often susceptible to corruption.