Xi Jinping is not making history – history is making him
Tom Plate says China’s current leader, whom many believe is at least as great as Mao and Deng were, must never forget that while his country’s significance will last, his may not
To what does Xi Jinping truly aspire? Who does China’s “paramount leader” think he is? Xi doesn’t need fawning media coverage to mislead him into believing something he may or may not be. Whether China’s president is crowned person of the year by a self-important US magazine (such as Time) is of no importance. Xi himself must understand that he is arguably unimportant. He should not require cover stories to bolster his self-image.
Xi is not making history; history is making him. There was no way China was going to remain down and out forever. It has always been a potential force majeure – stormy when stormy; calm, but usually superficially, with undercurrents below spiralling to emerge as history’s next great wave.
For decades, perhaps our most astute geopolitical weather forecaster has been Kishore Mahbubani, who is stepping down this month as the founding dean of the highly regarded Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. His first book (essays and speeches) hit the United States in the 1990s and was titled (ironically enough), Can Asians Think? Its theme was that, with Asia coming into its own, if Westerners think the 21st century will prove a repeat of the American century, they had better think again.
Mahbubani sincerely doubts the US is psychologically prepared for that, but like it or not, China is back and we had better figure out how to deal with it or face hitting the great Chinese brick wall of history. Large as well as small nation states need to do that big rethink now. It may prove painful. Brainy Singapore, ever thinking forward, is not alone in its anguish over how to proceed. (By the way, Singapore friends: be not cranky. Heated public debate on vital issues is a sign of cultural strength, not weakness.) Other governments are into the deep think: Australia (with its panoply of think tanks and universities); Japan (missiles suddenly overhead); South Korea, sometimes so small-town, suddenly on big-time red alert.
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Singapore is not alone in its anguish over how to deal with a China on the rise. Large and small nation states needs to rethink their relations with the Asian giant, now back on the global stage. Photo: Reuters
Xi has been pushing modern China outwards, perhaps in the hope of kingdoms to come. But he undoubtedly knows that his most serious worries nest at home.
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The rich-poor gap is huge and growing (including in Hong Kong, of which Xi is now the ultimate landlord). This is an explosion waiting to happen. And the government’s evident ideological clampdown on universities seems inimical to the need for innovation and further globalisation.
Note that China rarely misses the chance to blame foreigners and their interventions for past troubles, and with stubbornness avoids looking deeply inward for fear of understanding itself better. This is not healthy. As the late historian and critic Simon Leys (aka Pierre Ryckmans) suggested, the embrace of ideology blinds one to reality.
