Commentary
China featured large in a recent article carried by the prestigious The Atlantic magazine. In those pages, China experts from the American Enterprise Institute, Dan Blumenthal and Derek Scissors, dissected the change Xi Jinping has wrought in the country’s economic objectives since he took office in 2013.
All his predecessors, from Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao, had straightforward aims: promoting growth to develop China’s economy at every level, elevating China’s stature globally, and securing domestic tranquility by improving the lot of the Chinese people.
Xi, in contrast, has more particular and militant goals. According to this analysis, he aims to minimize China’s dependence on other nations and maximize its ability to coerce other nations. His plans are not working smoothly at all. It is not apparent that they ever could….