Robert Lawrence Kuhn

What to make of Xi Jinping, China’s new senior leader, who holds his first summit meeting this week with President Barack Obama?

The hope is that Xi is a reformer who will guide China through domestic transformation and to responsible statecraft. The fear is that Xi is a nationalist, who has set China on an aggressive course of bullying its neighbors and confronting the United States.

The fear seems not unfounded. China has intensified its territorial claims, from island disputes with Japan to vast areas of the South China Sea.

Xi frequently inspects People’s Liberation Army forces, especially naval fleets, exhorting China’s military to “get ready to fight and to win wars” and “to win regional warfare under I.T.-oriented…  Seguir leyendo »

Some have taken the extraordinary dismissal of Bo Xilai, the controversial Politburo member and party secretary from Chongqing, as a sign that the transition of power in China is in trouble. On the contrary, it shows that the process has matured and is working as it needs to.

Vice President Xi Jinping, who is slated to be approved as general secretary of the Communist Party in the fall and as president the following March, will be the first leader not chosen peremptorily by China’s prior leaders. Rather, he was selected through a broader polling of party officials. While neither transparent nor anonymous, the process is a big advance in China’s long march toward “intraparty democracy.”…  Seguir leyendo »