| | | USSR as collapsing. No one saw it. Same today happens with China.
China is moribund.
In 1993, in a special National Interest edition entitled “The Strange Death of Soviet Communism,” the scholar Charles Fairbanks warned that many had missed the Soviet Union’s long decay because they had not focused on the Soviet Union’s loss of ideological legitimacy among the Communist Party’s elite.
China today is making up for the absence of attractive political principles or ideologies by creating a new empire of fear, and offering increasingly strident appeals to an imperialist nationalism. That is not to say that China will collapse, but Xi has changed the nation’s internal dynamics. The result is a far less predictable course for the Middle Kingdom than materialist political-science theories might predict.
The party appears to feel more besieged and under threat than at any time since Tiananmen Square. And Xi has potentially further destabilized the system by crowning himself with ten titles, including
- head of state,
- head of military,
- general secretary of the CCP, and
- leader of the new “leading groups” to oversee:
- Internet policy,
- national security,
- military reform, and
- Taiwan policy.
He has effectively taken over the courts, the police, and all the secret internal para-military and other agencies of internal control.
This means that all successes and failures are Xi’s alone. There is no doubt that he has made powerful enemies among the elites who stand at the ready to undermine him should the opportunity arise.
The Unpredictable Rise of China
Xi Jinping seeks national rejuvenation, but his nation’s mounting power masks increased instability.
FEB 3, 2019
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/how-americans-misunderstand-chinas-ambitions/581869/ |
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