"All of the last 10 years has been about making sure, as you might put it, that it's Xi Jinping's China. It's Xi Jinping's party, everyone else is just living in it."
Despite China's growth as an economic and military force, Xi Jinping's authoritarian government may ultimately be seen as a drag on the nation's prosperity and the flourishing of the Chinese population.
A leading China scholar argues that the government's increased restrictions on individuals and companies, from the petty to the consequential, signal a retrenchment of central authority after a period of liberalization.
“By tracing the continuity of the party over 100 years, it is used to show that it was inevitable for Xi to emerge at this time to be the ‘core’ of the party,” said Tony Saich of Harvard's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Creating a heroic role for Xi in the sweep of Chinese history is an important propaganda aim, but it shows that China faces urgent problems in the here-and-now that the leader may not be able to manage.
The Chinese Communist Party's newest official history elevates Xi as a figure of historical significance alongside Mao and Deng Xiaoping, making the country's history an instrument of political power.
The Chinese president has praised Karl Marx as the "greatest thinker of modern times" ahead of the bicentennial of the German philosopher. Xi's German counterpart, meanwhile, was far more critical.
Sponsored by the National History Center, the purpose of the briefing was to give historical context to current tensions between the United States and China, with a particular focus on Chinese aims and anxieties.
Depicting China’s people as inheritors of a single set of values, rather than individuals shaped by and able to draw on many strands of indigenous culture, is wrong.
