Various explanations have been proffered for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s renewed emphasis on ideology. The popular narratives attribute it to either Xi’s power ambitions, or a reaction rooted in his personal trauma during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Meanwhile, an alternative discourse projects the rise of ideology politics as a response to a possible legitimacy crisis facing the Communist Party of China (CPC). This paper weighs in, and finds that in current Chinese ideology, the revolutionary impulse has regained its place alongside nationalism. The paper investigates this phenomenon—seen perhaps only during the Mao era—and attributes it to Xi’s desire to repair the authority crisis at the apex leadership seen under the presidencies of those who preceded him