Economist: Xi Jinping is more powerful than Donald Trump

According to the Economist, the Washington Post quotes Trump as saying that China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, is “probably the most powerful” China has had in a century.

The newspaper reports that China’s economy is still second in size to the US and its army. However, the United States is still the world’s most powerful country, but its leader is weaker at home and less effective abroad than any of his recent predecessors.

The president of the world’s largest authoritarian state has a grip on China tighter than any leader’s since Mao. Xi’s is a dominant engine of global growth, the magazine reports.

The Economist further draws a comparison between the two leaders by saying that on numerous foreign tours, Xi presents himself as an apostle of peace and friendship. Trump’s failings have made this much easier.

The article titled “The world’s most powerful man China’s Xi Jinping has more clout than Donald Trump. The world should be wary” says Xi projecting what for China is unprecedented military power abroad.

The author states a list of Xi's steps taken to increase China's military power opening the country’s first foreign military base, in Djibouti to sending sent the Chinese navy on manoeuvres ever farther afield, including in July on Nato’s doorstep in the Baltic Sea alongside Russia’s fleet.

The Economist says that the fate of the Soviet Union haunts Xi. He mistrusts China’s fast-growing, smartphone-wielding middle class. He seems determined to tighten control over Chinese society, not least by enhancing the state’s powers of surveillance, and to keep the commanding heights of the economy firmly under the party’s thumb.

According to the Economist, some optimists argue that they have not yet seen the real Xi—that the congress will help him consolidate his power, and after that he will begin social and economic reforms in earnest, building on his relative success in curbing corruption.

The Economist also says that one-man rule is ultimately a recipe for instability in China, as it has been in the past. It fears the he world might get an isolationist United States or a dictatorship in China.