CAN'T HAVE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS...:

Recent policy actions show the difficulty he faces managing a sprawling bureaucracy in the world's second-biggest economy: Officials either take orders too far, as in the case of coal mine and power plant supervisors who worsened a national energy crisis, or they're so paralyzed by fear they fail to take autonomous decisions -- even during major crises such as unprecedented flooding or an emerging pandemic. 

In many ways, Xi has himself to blame. China's local governments had long turned a blind eye to some Beijing dictates, a dynamic captured by a saying in Sun Tzu's "The Art of War": "A general in the field is not bound by the orders from his sovereign." Xi's centralization of power, along with an anti-corruption campaign that has ensnared more than four million officials, has both raised the stakes and skewed the incentives for officials on the ground. 

The result is legions of bureaucrats struggling to understand how they can please the bosses in Beijing, and secure promotions up through the ranks of the opaque Communist Party. While that may give Xi greater control than previous Chinese leaders and helped clamp down on excessive corruption, it also risks sapping economic dynamism at a time when growth is slowing and the country faces challenges from an aging workforce, mounting domestic debt and increasingly acrimonious trade partners. 

"The great irony is that in the 2020s and beyond when China needs to embrace a new development model, there would normally be a strong case for more decentralization and experimentation," said George Magnus, research associate at Oxford University's China Centre. "But Xi's model calls for precisely for an inflexible and flawed opposite structure. He may rue this governance model sooner or later."

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