Can Xi’s quest for economic and political dominance succeed?

In City Journal, Judith Miller writes,

Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin was there. So was President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, along with the heads of Italy, Portugal, Austria, Cyprus, and eight other smaller European states, all ostensible American allies. In late April, 150 nations sent some 5,000 delegates to the second summit in Beijing on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s signature economic project—the Belt and Road Initiative.

An invitation to discuss BRI—the sprawling network of roads, power plants, ports, pipelines, and more than 900 projects underway in 70 countries to create new land and sea corridors linking China with the rest of Asia and beyond—was a de facto summons. The leaders assembled in the giant convention center, all dutifully awaiting Xi’s remarks, testified to China’s new financial clout and political position in the world. China, not the United States, has become the largest trading partner of some 130 nations. For those trading with China, or seeking to do so, the BRI invitation could not be refused.

Notably absent, however, were leaders of the U.S. and its key European allies—Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. The abstentions reflected growing concern about not only the influence accompanying Beijing’s generous infrastructure loans and grants through BRI and China’s recently created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, but more broadly, Xi’s leadership—his ominous authoritarianism, unprecedented consolidation of power, his reversal of economic reform at home, and his increasing assertiveness in projecting China’s military and economic influence abroad.

In her compelling book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State, veteran China watcher Elizabeth C. Economy carefully chronicles the sweeping, dangerous changes implemented by Xi, asserting that they constitute a veritable “third revolution”—or, more accurately, a “counterrevolution,” as Orville Schell, a respected China scholar who praises her work, prefers to call it. Economy also analyzes why China’s challenge to the U.S.-led global order is so serious, as are the fundamental contradictions in China’s policies that threaten Xi’s ambitions. Finally, she dispassionately explores the paradox inherent in Xi’s strategy and the key question raised by the pursuit of his “Chinese Dream,” which represents the “rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation”: In an “illiberal state seeking leadership in a liberal world order,” can Xi’s quest for economic and political dominance succeed?

...But Xi’s soothing pledges were soon undermined by his contradictory conduct, often “diametrically opposed” to the national interests of the U.S. and other liberal democracies. Contrary to Western expectations, China’s increasingly egregious behavior accelerated with engagement. Economy and other scholars point to China’s imprisonment of as many as 1 million non-Chinese Uighurs and members of other Muslim ethnic groups in reeducation camps in Xinjiang; the development of technology to provide the omnipresent, all-seeing, infallible surveillance required for an Orwellian police state; and Beijing’s systemic, state-supported cyber hacking and institutionalized grand theft of America’s scientific, technical, corporate and intellectual property. Republican and Democratic presidents alike quietly tried, but largely failed, to dissuade Xi from insisting on admission to national markets and international institutions while closing his own to foreign competitors. Under Xi, the suppression of domestic critics and barring of foreign students and nongovernmental activist groups has intensified. So has China’s military buildup in the South China Sea and far beyond. These trends, coupled with Xi’s elimination of presidential term limits and the revival of a cult of personality reminiscent of Mao around “Xi Dada”—or “Uncle Xi,” as he is known on social media—have sparked a backlash among scholars and policymakers.

...“Constraints on education and the Internet, intellectual property theft, and a perverted system of rewards for research all hinder the development of an environment that fosters top-quality basic research,” she writes. So, too, does Xi’s return to favoring state-owned enterprises over individual-owned and smaller, more innovative businesses. China’s continuing brain drain also hurts. Thanks to China’s risk-averse bureaucrats and state-dominated R&D model, only 2.2 million of the 4 million Chinese students who studied abroad since 1987 have returned home.

(I wonder how many of them are spies).
Read more here.