| Summary/Abstract |
The People's Republic of China (PRC) under Xi Jinping appears headed toward one of two very different outcomes. Each is worrisome. Each enormously consequential. The first is that President Xi becomes a durable strongman by continuing to strengthen personal dominance, falling back on the Leninist playbook as well as populist (and popular) policies of attacking corruption with minimal legal restraint, taking down competing personal and organizational networks, and rallying the populace around the flagpole of assertive nationalism. In this scenario, strategic tension with the United States and many PRC neighbors would mount because assertiveness breeds opposition. As Shanghai Professor Yida Zhai observed, “Power cannot make China a great state.”11. Yida Zhai, “Can Power Make a Great State? Asian Citizens’ Views of China's Power,” Issues & Studies 54, no. 4 (December 2015), p. 85.
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Zhai worries about the sizeable gap between the objective recognition of China's strength by PRC neighbors and those neighbors' far less favorable evaluation of that strength. Further, following this path leaves unaddressed China's problems of political institutions, including succession and the stable management of an increasingly diverse society.
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