For the last several months, ever-larger numbers of economic and political experts have been trying to understand what is going on in China. While their politics have always been difficult for outsiders to follow, until recently their economics were comparatively straightforward or at least somewhat less mysterious.
Recently a new theory of comprehending Chinese government action has emerged and seems plausible if not likely: Xi Jinping may not be the sharpest pencil in the box, even borderline incompetent.
Many have a hard time wrapping their heads around this idea, since the Machiavellian workings of the Chinese Communist party and government bureaucracy seem to require political cunning and strategic foresight to rise to power. Instead, Xi seems increasingly focused on building a personality cult and only secondarily interested in the serious problems of its economy and foreign policy.
He continues to pack top offices with hand-picked loyalists who may or may not have and expertise to bring to the challenges. Purging experts with differing political views has weakened their top-down control economic system by producing poor decisions or more often, no decisions.
The enormous problem of Chinese real estate debt, the base of their economy remains adrift, and not in the right direction. The ambitious Belt and Road Initiative has run into predictable problems that are not insoluble but won’t get better when they are ignored.
This is the lesson from the history we sadly don’t teach much anymore: strongman governments or dictatorships only work when the leader knows what he or she is doing. And they definitely don’t work well after the leader is dead.
It has been hard not to watch the astonishing rise of China to the world’s second-largest economy and number one manufacturer without giving grudging respect to their leadership. But Xi is coasting on, and possibly undoing accomplishments of his predecessors.
China will be hard to understand and impossible to predict as long as he is in office.
