View: Xi and the art of losing friends

Generations will view present decade of 21st century as one where things began to fall apart -global finance, trade to the pandemic, and the geopolitical ruptures, eventually.

The decade will also be looked as where the helmsmen squandered cozy advantages to emerge poorer, having messed-up the dream-starts to bequeathing tarnished legacies.

Xijinping’s legacy, in this regard, will be viewed as in the art of losing friends, of having burst the fragile fiscal-bubbles of fledgling fellow-economies, of having broken the charmed-spell of its market rally, and for the mercantilist-mindset in a fast integrating world.


Xijinping’s legacy will contrast starkly to those of his predecessors’ as well who navigated country’s socio-economic march deftly, in far challenging times with far fewer resources at hand - be it uprooting of the historical-disadvantages, planting the seeds of economic prosperity, modernization of Party, or of proclaiming non-threatening intent of its rise.

Fascination for the grand and the monumental has thrown an epic-spanner between the Party and the people-once a foundational-commitment of the PRC. Enforced Covid-lockdowns despite economic-sufferings, ensuing food-shortages, falling economic indices demonstrate amply the people as having slipped in Party’s order of priority.

Oncoming fiscal-headwinds do not portend well for the PRC economy. Having bargained its hard-earned economic-gains and trade for the geopolitical heft betray the hollowed-visions of the Belt and Road and debt-fueled sprees abroad.

Insensitivity to day-to-day governance matched with an obsession for the grand demonstrates a party-leadership that takes people for granted and believes in economic and fiscal governance as non-variants in its zeal for geopolitical theatrics.