My Take | Don't be surprised if Chinese leaders are insecure

China's authoritarian leaders are usually portrayed by the foreign media as being paranoid and insecure. They may be outwardly confident and fond of lecturing other governments, especially Japan and America, and throwing their geopolitical weight around the world from the East and South China seas to mining concessions in southern Africa.

But their self-assurance is apparently deceptive. President Xi Jinping may like to sing about the Chinese dream. But he is really staring at the nightmares of environmental degradation, social dislocation from rapid urbanisation and brewing popular discontent that is becoming more vocal and violent by the day.

In this vein, here's a typical opinion piece from The New York Times, written by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. With a title like that, he must be an expert, not just another China-bashing ideologue.

"Xi's self-assurance is not surprising, but his words and deeds betray a deep vein of insecurity," he wrote.

"If the dream's realisation is close at hand, what is there to fear? Plenty, it turns out ... Newer fears include a Chinese variant of the Arab Spring and a possible economic crisis ... that would undermine the party's basis of legitimacy: its ability to steadily raise living standards."

But given China's head-spinning modernisation achieved in a single generation when it took Europe a century to do the same, any people living through it would be disconcerted, not least the rulers.