BEIJING — The must-see tourist sights of the Chinese capital form a grandiose circuit: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and, for early birds willing to brave long lines, the mausoleum of Mao Zedong.
But there is a new stop on Beijing’s sightseeing loop: an unassuming fast-food restaurant on the west side that has become a pilgrimage destination for fans of the president, Xi Jinping. It was here last year that Mr. Xi riveted the nation after he made a seemingly off-the-cuff visit to the Qingfeng Steamed Bun Shop, paid his own way and then carried his tray to one of the restaurant’s cheap folding tables.
“We’re following in the footsteps of our great leader,” Bai Henglin, a 29-year-old chauffeur, gushed as he took a selfie with his $3.50 Presidential Combo meal (steamed buns and a bowl of pig liver stew). “Out-of-town visitors who come to Beijing and don’t stop here will regret it.”
The restaurant’s morning-till-night crowds are just one barometer of the adulation directed at Mr. Xi since he assumed power in 2012. His serene smile graces ornamental plates and good luck trinkets, and a book of his thoughts on governing has been translated into eight languages with 17 million copies reportedly sold or given away. His avuncular charms have inspired songs and poems celebrating “Papa Xi” as a virtuous husband, a friend to the toiling peasant and an enemy of the corrupt.
“The sons and daughters of China follow you forward hand in hand,” goes one soft-rock paean to Mr. Xi that has been downloaded thousands of times. “Great general secretary, beloved President Xi, the Chinese nation is sure to rejuvenate because we have you.”
Not since Mao dominated the nation with his masterly blend of populism, fervor and fear has a Chinese leader commanded so much public awe. Deng Xiaoping was a formidable power, but he disavowed the mania of the Mao era. Since then, fawning public displays over political leaders have been taboo. Mr. Xi’s immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao, made a virtue of dull self-effacement.
Not Papa Xi.
Some of his appeal stems from his war on corruption and from feel-good sloganeering like the “Chinese Dream,” his pitch for a rejuvenated, powerful nation. But the adoration has also been primed by relentless propaganda portraying Mr. Xi as an indomitable alloy of Superman and Everyman who holds up his own umbrella, kicks soccer balls and knows how to fire a rifle.
During his first two years in power, his name appeared in the main, eight-page section of People’s Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper, more than twice as often as Mr. Hu’s did during his first two years, according to the China Media Project of the University of Hong Kong.
“You can see the whole Chinese propaganda machine has geared up to promote his personality,” said Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who monitors developments in Chinese media and censorship for the website China Digital Times. “It’s become over the top.”
While many Chinese welcome a strong, plain-speaking leader, critics say the zealous promotion of Mr. Xi has begun to show some of the hallmarks of a personality cult, alarming those who see echoes of the hubris that engulfed Mao.
Take, for example, the songs. One of the most popular tributes to Mr. Xi is a ditty that starts with the words, “China has produced a Papa Xi,” an unmistakable nod to “The East Is Red,” the Cultural Revolution ode to Mao that opens with the line, “China has produced a Mao Zedong.”
The song about Mr. Xi is similarly worshipful:
He dares to beat any tiger, no matter how big the tiger is.
He is not afraid of heaven or earth.
We dream of meeting him.
Examples of party-nurtured Xi fever abound. They include a music video that shows Mr. Xi as a doting, model husband, and photos splashed on the front pages of newspapers that portray him as a loyal son of the land, a scion of the revolutionary generation who, like millions of his peers, spent part of his youth exiled in the countryside.
A theater in the nation’s capital recently presented a musical inspired by Mr. Xi’s life and policies, and last month art applicants to the Beijing University of Technology were asked to draw a portrait of the president as part of their entrance exam. In its report on the testing session, The Beijing Evening News suggested that the young applicants were awe-struck by the subject. “I didn’t realize I would be so lucky to encounter this part of the exam,” one prospective student said.
In interviews, many ordinary citizens said they welcomed the splash of charismatic leadership, especially after the dreary, plodding manner of Mr. Hu, whose keynote slogan, “Scientific Outlook on Development,” lacked the emotional punch of Mr. Xi’s “Chinese Dream.”
The Chinese public has largely welcomed Mr. Xi’s clampdown on graft, which has toppled powerful officials who once seemed untouchable. His warnings that China would assert its territorial claims through muscular diplomacy and a stronger military have also proved popular. And in many supporters’ eyes, his policies are one with his bluff, swaggering character, forged as the son of a revolutionary veteran.
“You get the feeling that President Xi cares about the little guy,” said Yang Tianrong, 75, a retired soldier from Hebei Province, as a group of neighbors nodded enthusiastically. “He gives you hope that the government can solve your problems.”
Sebastian Heilmann, director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, said the gushing promotion of Mr. Xi suggested party propagandists were adapting a Western approach to politics that relies on personal appeal to earn popular affection.
I think there is really a longing for a strong leader among the Chinese public,” he said, one that party strategists have been happy to satisfy. He said they had been savvy in their embrace of social media, seeding the Internet with catchy slang tributes and pop-culture cartoons that feel more viral than the standard, stilted propaganda videos.
Liberal intellectuals have been less impressed, saying the party’s image-building juggernaut is playing with fire, given China’s unhappy experience with the cult of personality and the ideological witch hunts of the Mao years. Some of those concerns have been heightened by a government crackdown on political dissent and a campaign against so-called hostile foreign forces, including Western ideas like human rights and “constitutionalism.”
Li Datong, a political commentator in Beijing, said many of those who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s were especially unsettled. “It’s ridiculous that he’s pulling the personal cult ploy,” he said. “The Chinese propaganda apparatus, with its instinct of sucking up to the supreme leader, is partly to blame, but the problem is that he hasn’t moved to stop it. Obviously he is indulging this, which to be honest makes us very uneasy.”
Despite their misgivings, many liberals said they doubted Mr. Xi would go so far as to revive the excesses of the Mao era. But Bao Tong, a senior party official who was purged and imprisoned after the pro-democracy protests of 1989, said Mr. Xi risked alienating supporters inside the party by casting himself as the only one who could save China.
Building Mr. Xi into a political demigod to drown out debate and dissent “won’t unify people’s thinking,” he said.
Mr. Xiao of China Digital Times agreed, saying that some of the more recent propaganda flourishes have generated ridicule online, especially published remarks in which Mr. Xi denounced “strange” contemporary architecture and exhorted artists and writers to serve the masses rather than their own creative impulses. “It made Xi Jinping look like an idiot,” he said.
Some analysts say Mr. Xi’s traumatic family history should have given him a searing lesson in the risks of cultish obedience. His father, Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary hero, was driven from power in 1962 after Mao accused him of seeking to subvert the party, and was seized and persecuted by Maoist radicals after the Cultural Revolution erupted in 1966.
But Mr. Xi’s comments and public appearances suggest he has no qualms tapping into Maoist inspiration. Just ahead of the Lunar New Year, Mr. Xi paid homage to Mao’s revolutionary base in Yan’an, in northwest China, and visited the village where he spent much of the Cultural Revolution as an adolescent.
Despite the upheavals of those years, analysts say, Mr. Xi and other political figures of his generation still idealize certain elements of Mao’s rule, especially his appeal to national pride and the image he cultivated as a strongman who was incorruptible and self-sacrificial.
“It is not surprising that these ‘red scions’ would betray the influence of their adolescent socialization as they consolidate political power,” Elizabeth J. Perry, a professor of government at Harvard University who has studied party propaganda under Mr. Xi, said in an email. “These are powerful themes which Xi Jinping is tapping into.”
For the moment, it is rare to hear complaints among ordinary Chinese. On a recent afternoon, Wang Feng, 45, a midlevel functionary in town from nearby Shandong Province, said he had been to the Qingfeng Steamed Bun Shop three times over the past year, each time dragging along a colleague from the bureau of commerce and industry where he works.
“Our president has a stiff spine and will lead China to a brighter place,” Mr. Wang said, as a loop of news accounts about Mr. Xi’s visit to the restaurant played on a television screen behind him.
Andrew Jacobs reported from Beijing, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong. Patrick Zuo contributed research from Beijing.