Xi Jinping in New Yorker


On Government Reform: Ended presidential term limits, consolidating power

China moved to end a two-term limit on the Presidency, clearing the way for Xi to rule the country for as long as he, and his peers, can abide. The decision marks the clearest expression of Xi's core beliefs--his impatience with affectations of liberalism, his belief in the Communist Party's moral superiority, and his unromantic conception of politics as a contest between force and the forced. Decades after Deng Xiaoping warned against "the leadership of a single person," China is re-entering a period in which the fortunes of a fifth of humanity hinge on the visions, impulses, and insecurities of a solitary figure. The end of Presidential term limits risks closing a period in Chinese history, from 2004 to today, when the orderly, institutionalized transfer of power set it apart from other authoritarian states.
Source: Evan Osnos, "President for Life" in The New Yorker Feb 26, 2018

On Government Reform: Most serious challenge since the end of the Cold War

Some observers have likened [Xi's unbridled power after ending term limits] to the imperial rule of Vladimir Putin, but the similarities are limited. In matters of diplomacy and war, Putin wields mostly the weapons of the weak: hackers in American politics, militias in Ukraine, obstructionism in the United Nations. It is the arsenal of a declining power. Xi, by contrast, is ascendant. On the current trajectory, Xi's economy and military will pose a far greater challenge to American leadership than Putin's. Xi, in his first five years in power, dismantled what are known in China as the qian guize (the "unwritten rules"), which allowed people to bribe their way to higher office or to skirt the edges of censorship. Now he is throwing out the written rules, and to the degree that he applies that approach to the international system--including rules on trade, arms, and access to international waters--America faces its most serious challenge since the end of the Cold War.
Source: Evan Osnos, "President for Life" in The New Yorker Feb 26, 2018

The above quotations are from Columns and news articles in The New Yorker.
Click here for other excerpts from Columns and news articles in The New Yorker.
Click here for other excerpts by Xi Jinping.
Click here for a profile of Xi Jinping.
Please consider a donation to OnTheIssues.org!
Click for details -- or send donations to:
1770 Mass Ave. #630, Cambridge MA 02140
E-mail: submit@OnTheIssues.org
(We rely on your support!)

Page last updated: Oct 14, 2023