Xi Jinping’s Reach Exceeds His Grasp - Wall Street Journal
Full article available in the Wall Street Journal.
By Kevin Rudd
The Chinese Communist Party will convene in November for its most consequential Party Congress in 40 years. For the party, politics is about securing and sustaining its hold on power. For Xi Jinping, the Party Congress is also about personal power. His goals are to secure reappointment as general secretary and a record third term as president and to make China the pre-eminent regional and global power during his lifetime.
At the 12th Party Congress in 1982, Deng Xiaoping set China’s political and ideological course for the next 35 years. Economic development through market reform and a foreign policy built around engagement with the world (including deeper relations with Washington) were the core ideological principles that defined China during the following decades. They also defined an unofficial social contract between the party and the Chinese people to rebuild its political legitimacy after the wanton destruction of the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution and, later, the Tiananmen Square massacre.