China’s Mistakes Can Be America’s Gain
Xi Jinping should be enjoying his final days in charge of China. For decades now, the Chinese Communist Party has regularly replaced its senior leadership—a system crucial to the nation’s success—and after 10 years in power, Xi would be due to step aside and allow a new team to guide the country’s future. But when the country’s top cadres meet in Beijing on October 16 for the 20th Party Congress, Xi is widely expected to break precedent and extend his rule for at least another five years.
Although this departure from custom has been mooted for years, the news might send a renewed chill down the spine of some in Washington, D.C. Xi has transformed China from the U.S.’s potential partner to its chief strategic adversary. The Chinese leader appears determined to capitalize on his country’s recently acquired wealth to challenge America’s economic primacy, technological advantage, and military dominance, and even its assumptions about the global order that forms the foundation of American power. Five more years of Xi almost certainly means five more years of superpower competition, even confrontation.
That is the conventional wisdom. But maybe Washington should be grateful Xi is sticking around. China’s leader definitely intends to roll back American global influence, but he may not be doing a good job of preparing his own country to attain that goal. The actual results of his policies suggest that he is weakening, not strengthening, China as a competitor to the United States. The longer Xi remains at China’s helm, the less competitive the country may become.
Lost amid the hype about China’s ascent is just how poorly the country has performed under Xi’s stewardship in
