Xi Jinping risks undermining everything that has made China exceptional: Foreign Policy
DHARAMSALA, Oct 16: Chinese President Xi Jinping’s personal power play risks undermining everything that has made China exceptional warns Jonathan Tepperman, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy.
“For decades, the country managed to avoid most problems suffered by dictatorships. Now Xi Jinping’s personal power play risks undermining everything that made China exceptional,” the editor in chief of the American news publication focused on global affairs, current events, and domestic and international policy has said.
China has racked up a long list of remarkable accomplishments in the last 40 years and the growth helped some 800 million people out of poverty, but the accomplishment was possible only because of China’s repressive policies; something that historical precedent and political theory suggest is very, very difficult, Tepperman has said in his opinion piece titled ‘China’s Great Leap Backward’.
Tepperman has also stated that systematically undermined virtually everything that made China so distinct and helped it work so well in the past since assuming power in 2012.
Though Xi’s efforts may make China seem less corrupt and more stable, it will have disastrous long-term consequences for his country and the world, he has warned.
First, in the name of fighting corruption—an important goal and one China badly needs—he has purged a vast number of officials whose real crime, in Xi’s view, was failing to show sufficient loyalty to the paramount leader and replaced this incentive-based system with one based on fear, the editor in chief noted.
“Not content to merely eliminate any competition, Xi has also consolidated his power by abandoning the term limits on his job and by refusing to name a successor and made himself “chairman of everything” Tepperman stated.
The editor in chief has further warned with the China head locked with the US in the Trade War things could turn worst for the Communist regime that could even lead to their collapse.
“If China’s economic problems spin out of control completely, the state could collapse—a typical occurrence among typical dictatorships when faced with economic shocks, external threats, or popular unrest as Xi could try to ratchet up tensions on any of these fronts in order to distract his citizens from the crisis at home,” he wrote.
