Can Xi Jinping guide China through its current problems even as its power is unmatched in history?
It is a time when no obvious challenges to [Xi Jinping's] authority are emerging, and China has never enjoyed such international reach, economic strength, or military might. Yet in a marked departure from his predecessors, Xi has been in a rush to tighten the screws on dissent, to expand technological surveillance of his people, to assert new controls over private business, and to vastly strengthen his party’s prerogatives and power.
Mao said all political power grows out of a barrel of a gun. That's ultimately true for all governments, of course. But China has been particularly enthusiastic in practicing this reality.
So China's rulers see all challenges as one that must be shot or controlled by fear of being shot (back to the first article):
As Jude Blanchette writes in Foreign Affairs: “His belief that the CCP must guide the economy and that Beijing should rein in the private sector will constrain the country’s future economic growth. His demand that party cadres adhere to ideological orthodoxy and demonstrate personal loyalty to him will undermine the governance system’s flexibility and competency. His emphasis on an expansive definition of national security will steer the country in a more inward and paranoid direction. His unleashing of ‘Wolf Warrior’ nationalism will produce a more aggressive and isolated China.”
Well, what choice does Xi have caught between the ideology of a CCP monopoly on power and Chinese size and history? He fears loosening control as the Soviets did before their implosion. So he is making more and better guns. And using them or openly threatening to use them.
Xi probably also understands from Chinese history that predicting alternative paths for Chinese political development can be thrown into disarray by remembering that "all of the above" is also an answer to the question of how China will develop. "China" may be a geographic term rather than a political expression.
UPDATE: The World Health Organization is just one entity that China has bought:
China's elite capture of WHO gave the CCP time to deflect blame and callously let the disease spread globally so that China didn't suffer its consequences alone.
What else will happen because China bought foreigners? Let's expose who has been bought by Peking before we find out. Don't let the CCP do to us what they've done to themselves in their century:
Have a super sparkly centennial.
NOTE: Oops. Title fixed.
