Has China reached the peak of its powers?
Xi Jinping has set himself up for a difficult year
By Roger McShane: China Editor, The Economist
EVEN IN HIS moment of triumph, Xi Jinping admitted that dark clouds hang over China. At the Communist Party’s five-yearly congress in October 2022, Mr Xi secured a precedent-trampling third term as party chief. Speaking before some 2,300 party delegates in Beijing, the “helmsman”, as he is now called in state media (with worrying echoes of the worship of Mao Zedong more than half a century ago), described a decade of mostly smooth sailing under his rule. Extreme poverty has been eliminated and his “zero-covid” policy saved lives, he said. The party had “effectively contained ethnic separatists, religious extremists and violent terrorists”, he boasted, using rather loose definitions of each. But he also warned party leaders to “be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms”.
Mr Xi believes foreign powers, led by America, want to contain China. And not without reason. Many Western countries find China’s rise alarming. President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to hobble the Chinese technology industry with sanctions and export controls. Mr Xi wants to reshape the world order in a way that would please autocrats. He presents China’s authoritarian model as a plausible alternative to the West. And he has more resources at his disposal than any despot in history.
