Reuters (April 25)
“Under Xi Jinping, Beijing has elevated its missile forces to a point where many rockets in the Chinese arsenal now rival or outperform those of the United States. This dramatic shift could render American carriers – the backbone of U.S. military supremacy – obsolete in a conflict with China.”
Tags: Arsenal, Beijing, China, Conflict, Military, Missile force, Obsolete, Outperform, Rival, Rockets, Supremacy, U.S., Xi Jinping
Wall Street Journal (July 5)
The downfall of former Politburo member Ling Jihua may mark the end of “paramount leader Xi Jinping’s purge of political rivals under cover of an anticorruption campaign.” It’s not likely to end the intrigue. “While the ‘tiger hunt’ for top-level cadres may be over, that doesn’t mean Mr. Xi has consolidated power. China’s political struggle continues in other guises. This will make government policies unpredictable and risks conflict spilling out into public view in ways not seen since 1989.”
Tags: Anticorruption, Conflict, Downfall, Ling Jihua, Politburo, Power, Purge, Risks, Rivals, Unpredictable, Xi Jinping
Barron’s (January 12)
“President Xi Jinping’s men thought they’d escaped 2015’s woes, only to see the floor fall out from under them in the first 10 days of this year. The root causes of instability that’s panicking global markets can be traced back to Jan. 1, 2015, when Xi opted for a muddle-through policy akin to Tokyo’s in the late 1990s.” Xi and crew can still conceivably avoid Japan’s fate by “acting assertively to restructure the economy and repair the bad-debt-heavy national balance sheet. Increasingly, though, Xi’s government is acting like Tokyo’s, circa 1998.”
Tags: Bad debt, Economy, Global markets, Instability, Japan, Panic, Restructure, Tokyo, Xi Jinping
Institutional Investor (December 1)
A crackdown in China on the securities industry “is shaking confidence.” The crackdown includes “the disappearance of a top brokerage executive” who many presume has been removed for questioning. These and other events are “fueling worries that President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on alleged abuses in the securities industry is turning into a campaign against political rivals.”
Tags: Abuses, Brokerage executive, China, Confidence, Crackdown, Disappearance, Political rivals, Securities industry, Xi Jinping
Bloomberg (October 6)
“Eleven days into the Umbrella Revolution, it’s clear Beijing won’t back down. President Xi Jinping won’t accede to the movement’s universal suffrage proposal or sacrifice Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to ease tensions.” Unless the students “face reality and plot an endgame,” they risk becoming “irritants” to average Hongkongers. If, however, they can win a few concessions, the students “can demonstrate that they gave Goliath a good fight and achieved something substantial.”
Tags: Beijing, Concessions, Endgame, Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, Risk, Students, Tensions, Umbrella Revolution, Universal suffrage, Xi Jinping
Bloomberg (September 30)
“The most violent protests in Hong Kong in almost 50 years pose a dilemma for President Xi Jinping: clear the streets and risk embedding anti-China sentiment in a city that has prized its relative freedom, or make concessions and appear weak at home.”
Tags: Anti-China sentiment, Concessions, Freedom, Hong Kong, Protests, Risk, Violent, Xi Jinping
The Economist (November 16, 2013)
“Xi Jinping has made himself the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping. That is probably a good thing.” His predecessor Hu Jintao proved unable to surmount the numerous obstacles to real reform. President Xi will need this increased muscle to overcome entrenched interests. “Too many people do too well out of today’s system to make change easy,” but change it should.
Tags: Deng Xiaoping, Entrenched interests, Hu Jintao, Leader, Obstacles, Power, Reform, Xi Jinping
Financial Times (May 7, 2013)
“Pollution in China is now so bad that it threatens to obscure the vision being laid out by Xi Jinping, the new president…. The leadership needs to rethink its national goals. After all, what is the point of rapid economic growth if it creates cities in which it is dangerous to breathe?”
Tags: Air quality, China, Cities, Economic growth, Goals, Pollution, Xi Jinping
Financial Times (April 15, 2013)
“An era of relatively slower growth in China is welcome news–both for the country and the global economy. The government’s previous insistence that it must achieve growth of at least 8 per cent a year betrayed a neurotic insecurity about social unrest. It has also involved increasingly unacceptable environmental and social costs–as anybody breathing the choking Beijing air can testify. President Xi Jinping’s statement last week that ‘China’s model of development is not sustainable” was a sign of political maturity.’”
Tags: Beijing, China, Environment, Slower growth, Social costs, Xi Jinping
Reuters (March 16)
“In a break from months of saber rattling, China under new President Xi Jinping appears to be moderating its approach to a potentially explosive territorial dispute with Japan and taking measures to prevent accidental conflict.”
Tags: China, Conflict, Japan, Moderating, Territorial dispute, Xi Jinping
