THE DRAGON HAS NO TEETH:

At this historical juncture someone with a strong personality and formidable political skills--someone like Xi Jinping, in fact--was capable of dominating with considerable aplomb the Party nomenklatura. On top of that was Xi's personality: he's more ruthless than anyone else. That is to say, Xi Jinping took advantage of the limitations of his opponents as well as the Party as a whole and simply terrorised everyone into submission. If this had happened twenty, let alone thirty, years ago, Xi would never have got very far and the Eight Elders would have dispatched him in no time.

It is obvious that no individual or group within the Party can rein Xi Jinping in. Thus, Xi will be the architect of his own defeat. His style of governance is simply unsustainable; it will generate ever newer and greater policy missteps. That he has been able to get this far is a testament both to Xi's obduracy and also his inertia, a kind of helplessness fueled by the fact that he will not back down on any front. The truth of the matter is that he has never really been bolstered by sincerely held core beliefs; he is sustained by his political instincts. Some people in the Party have his measure. They make a show of total compliance and they even encourage his willfulness. They commandeer access to him and have proved masterful at putting the best face on the consequences of his political follies. In reality, they are guiding him towards an impossible predicament while letting all the frustrations and fury that his policies create focus on him and him alone. When the time comes he will bear sole responsibility for the quagmire at the heart of China's cyclical authoritarian politics.

Xi Jinping cannot escape his fate. Even as he has pursued his ideal vision of totalitarian control various other forces have used him for their own ends. ----Within the Party people encourage his worst instincts with the aim of creating political opportunities for themselves. Europe has taken advantage of the Sino-American conflict to increase its market share. The other new economies have encouraged a split with the West for the sake of benefitting their supply chains. America, too, has been using Xi Jinping's aggressive approach to further its interests in Asia. And then there are China's own democracy activists: they hope Xi Jinping will get a third term in office since they believe it will hasten the collapse of the Communist Party.

Of course, it is quite possible that Xi Jinping actually believes that he has the wherewithal to transform the world; even then, faced with stark realities of the prevalent vested interests it is inevitable that what he does [in particular in the economic realm] will be overturned lock, stock and barrel.----China has been in the process of integrating with the world for decades and no single individual can turn back the tide. The Communist Party simply won't allow the vision of one man to engage in a new cold war with the rest of the world. If Xi really does undermine the shared interests of large groups in society this will result in mass disaffection. That's why his situation is so precarious at the moment, because it is easier for people to oppose Xi rather than opposing the Communist Party itself. Over time, elites on both sides will collaborate and foment the kind of political crisis that will create a rift between Xi and the Party. Then he will be faced with mass disaffection and people piling on to bring him low. He will end up as a votive offering placed on the altar of political reconciliation.

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