Too Big to Quail

4 minute read
Orville Schell

In two of the world’s most opaque states, new leaders have just taken office: Pope Francis in the Vatican and President Xi Jinping in China. While the Pope was a surprise choice, Xi’s ascension was expected: he had already been named last November to the powerful positions of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the country’s Central Military Commission. Both men face mounting calls to govern more transparently and justly. The Pope has generated more news coverage, but it is Xi, as head of the planet’s biggest nation, who has far greater potential to influence world affairs.

Once, the leaders of China were imbued with almost as much divinity as a Pope. I first walked down the Avenue of Eternal Peace past the Forbidden City and Zhongnanhai, the party preserve in Beijing, in 1975, when Mao Zedong still lived and his Cultural Revolution still raged. Hidden away from the mortal world behind thick vermillion walls around the “great within,” as this imperial enclave was once known, Mao’s aura radiated outward with as much mystery and power as any enthroned Son of Heaven — or Holy Father. Like both, Mao cultivated a larger-than-life persona to enhance his authority as a supreme ruler.

(MORE: China’s New President Xi Jinping Met With Mysterious Lone Vote of Dissent)

No longer. After two decades of stunning economic growth and the advent of a vibrant and willful middle class, most Chinese are glad to be done with the ego-fueled “big leader” culture of Mao, and his successor, Deng Xiaoping, who orchestrated China’s opening to the world. Today, China is run by a collective leadership of mostly technocrats, led by the Politburo’s Standing Committee — currently comprising seven members — in which the President is merely first among equals. Xi and his cohorts rose not by self-promotion or public projection of their political views but by keeping their heads down and quietly maneuvering the party’s labyrinth of power.

That’s why the outside world knows so little about what makes Xi tick. For years now, the ruling strategy has been caution. Keep things moving along, especially the economy, by taking incremental steps rather than giant leaps. Result: none of the extreme, destructive actions that hurt China in the past, particularly under Mao, but also hardly any bold initiatives. Stability is the paramount objective.

Yet, not unlike the Roman Catholic Church, China is at an inflection point. Its economy is too dependent on state investment and exports; official corruption is epic in scale; the gap between rich and poor is widening; environmental problems are horrendous; and ever more Chinese chafe under the sternness of the rulers.

(MORE: China’s Own Leadership Conclave: Time to Raise the Rubber Stamps)

Xi seems to realize China needs change. He has spoken out against corruption and injustice, and attacked the excesses of officials, warning darkly that such behavior leads to “popular anger, social unrest and regime change.” He says he wants national “rejuvenation.” Nonetheless, Xi remains an enigma. During his February 2012 visit to the U.S., it was hard to gain any real political sense of the man. He seemed affable enough, but, with his hair always perfectly lacquered in place, his implacable, almost Mona Lisa — like countenance, and his set speeches, he succeeded in masking whatever charisma he possesses. Remember: China is not a democracy — Xi’s primary constituency is not the people but his party peers.

Then there’s the People’s Liberation Army, for which Xi has repeatedly expressed public support. Beijing sees its island disputes with Japan and sundry Southeast Asian nations as territorial encroachment, and the U.S.’s “pivot to Asia” as containment. The “100 years of humiliation” that China suffered under foreigners has provided a narrative of victimization for every Chinese leader since the last Emperor. Should Xi fire up the country with nationalist sentiment, Beijing’s relations with its neighbors and with Washington could be in jeopardy.

Xi says he has a “China dream” to restore his nation to a place of greatness in the world. To achieve that dream, he must write not a saga of adventurism overseas but the next reformist act of his country’s development drama at home. Only then will he be a worthy “big leader” for a truly respected China.

Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, is co-author, with John Delury, of the forthcoming Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century

MORE: Dumpling Diplomacy: The U.S. Treasury Secretary’s Beijing Lunch Enchants China

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com