What the commentators said
What marked Xi’s speech to the party congress last week was its “sheer ideological confidence”, said Jinghan Zeng on The Conversation. China’s ruling elite has often insisted that its brand of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” represents the best way to “make China great again”, but this week that message was delivered with fresh authority. To China’s leaders, the election of Donald Trump and the “chaos” caused by Brexit are “excellent grist for the propaganda mill” – glaring examples of the failure of Western liberal democracy. Alas, those leaders have a point, said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph. Europe, determined to salvage its disastrous experiment in monetary union, is gripped by “an inwardlooking paralysis”. Britain is so mired in political crisis that voters are starting to think that “a committed Marxist”, disingenuously claiming to be able to tackle today’s complex economic problems with “yesterday’s failed solutions”, is preferable to the present delinquent government. And across the Atlantic, Trump’s disdain for globalisation and willingness to ditch international agreements has left an “empty chair” for a new world leader. “Why shouldn’t Mr Xi fill it?”
China’s bid for global hegemony is already far advanced, said Anja Manuel in The Atlantic. It has pumped $300bn into its “Belt and Road” initiative, a range of infrastructure projects that includes an oil pipeline across Burma, and a container port in Pakistan linked by a 1,800-mile road to China’s interior. That’s just the start. Beijing plans to spend a further $1trn to create the “world’s most extensive commercial empire”. Xi has been able to pursue his global ambitions because he has eliminated serious challenges at home, said Kevin Rudd in the FT. He has kept his grip on the party through an anti-corruption drive that has humbled 278,000 officials, including many Politburo rivals. “Five years ago, I said Xi would be China’s most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping. I was wrong. He is its most powerful leader since Mao Zedong”.