Now, China is on the verge of a new emperor. Xi Jinping.
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Francis Fukuyama is concerned about the return of China's "bad emperor" problems:
The last bad emperor that China had was Mao Zedong. Mao liberated the country from foreign occupation but then went on to trigger two enormous catastrophes: the Great Leap Forward starting in the late 1950s and the Cultural Revolution starting in the late 1960s. The latter set China back a generation and scarred the elites who endured it. Collective leadership emerged as a direct reaction to that experience: Deng Xiaoping and other senior leaders of the party vowed that they would never let a single individual accumulate as much charismatic power as Mao.Xi is well on his way to becoming the next Mao.
Did the West see this coming?
As usual, the pundits in the “West” misplaced their bets on China, writes Pankaj Mishra:
Let there be no doubt: The world was a dangerous place long before Xi became China’s supreme leader and Donald Trump started to boast of winning trade wars. Its perils weren’t recognized because of the ideological intoxication and historical amnesia induced by the collapse of Soviet and East European regimes -- the blind faith that history had no choice but to move inexorably towards a terminus of Western-style capitalism and democracy. Xi’s power grab is simply another reminder that it’s time to put away such childish fancies and to reckon with the world as it is.Thankfully, we in the US have the 22nd amendment to the Constitution that will protect us from emperor trump!
