Must-Read: Gideon Rachman: Xi Jinping Has Changed China’s Winning Formula

Must-Read: Gideon Rachman: Xi Jinping Has Changed China’s Winning Formula: “What Mr Xi has done is essentially to abandon the formula that has driven China’s rise…

…created by Deng Xiaoping… and then refined by his successors…. In economics, Deng and his successors emphasised exports, investment and the quest for double-digit annual growth. In politics, China moved away from the charismatic and dictatorial model created by Mao Zedong and towards a collective leadership. And in foreign affairs, China adopted a modest and cautious approach to the world that became colloquially known in the west as hide-and-bide…. Under Mr Xi, who assumed the leadership of the Chinese Communist party towards the end of 2012, all three key ingredients of the Deng formula have changed….

China has moved back towards a model based around a strongman leader…. The years of double-digit growth are over…. The Xi era has seen a move away from hide-and-bide towards a foreign policy that challenges US dominance of the Asia-Pacific region….

In economics… the shift to a new model is perilous… an unsustainable splurge of credit and investment…. China still has to get used to lower rates of growth…. A healthy economy is crucial…. The country’s leaders have relied on rapid economic growth to give the political system a ‘performance legitimacy’, which party theorists have argued is far deeper than the mandate endowed by a democratic election…. When it comes to politics, in the post-Mao era the Communist party has… embrace[d] a collective style of government, with smooth transitions…. Mr Xi has broken with this model…. Many pundits believe that Mr Xi is now determined to serve more than two terms in office…. At the same time as economic and political tensions within China have risen under Mr Xi, so the country’s foreign policy has become more nationalistic….

The key to the Deng formula that created modern China was the primacy of economics. Domestic politics and foreign policy were constructed to create the perfect environment for a Chinese economic miracle. With Mr Xi, however, political and foreign policy imperatives frequently appear to trump economics. That change in formula looks risky for both China and the world.