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Bill Bishop, the publisher of the Sinocism newsletter on Chinese politics, said the birth of Xi Jinping Thought confirmed the rare levels of power and prestige enjoyed by its creator. “It means Xi is effectively unassailable … If you challenge Xi, you are challenging the party – and you never want to be against the party.”

Five years ago I said he would be China’s most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping. I was wrong. He is now China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong,” Rudd wrote

“He’s ruling differently, for sure, and people are intimidated by him because of the anti-corruption campaign.” But Shirk said she was reserving judgment on whether Xi was attempting “a real dictatorial play” until the new line-up of China’s top ruling council, the politburo standing committee, was announced on Wednesday.

He added: “We are not at the point, like in the Cultural Revolution, where mangoes that Mao Zedong touched are worshipped. But we are certainly seeing a movement towards a new type of politics … one that is borrowing heavily from [the Mao era].”

“If North Korea becomes an enemy state, it would have plenty of ways to harm China,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “Beijing cannot afford to have North Korea become permanently hostile.”

Adding to the complications, Mr. Xi, 62, and Mr. Kim, believed to be 33, have a fraught relationship, say American, Chinese, and South Korean officials.

While the two leaders hail from revolutionary families, they have little else in common. Mr. Xi’s formative years were dominated by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Kim attended a Swiss boarding school and inherited the title of supreme leader before turning 30.

Mr. Xi has long recognized China’s sense of camaraderie with the North, which dates to their Korean War alliance in the 1950s. (Mao called the relationship “as close as lips and teeth.”)

But the two countries have followed starkly divergent paths. While China is now a sophisticated economy and a rising power, North Korea has become increasingly isolated, enfeebled and erratic, depending on China for most of its food and energy.

“The nuclear test will seriously damage the bilateral relationship,” Mr. Yang said. “Xi Jinping has been forced to be more assertive.”

While his predecessors welcomed North Korean leaders with the fanfare of Politburo meetings, Mr. Xi has kept a distance.

In an unusually public rebuke, Mr. Xi warned that no country should be able to throw the world into chaos for “selfish gain.” Later that year, he imposed sanctions, limiting shipments of materials used in weapons and cutting ties to some North Korean banks, though enforcement was lax.

Mr. Xi has made clear to the North that its future lies in economic reform, not military development, and that China will not accept a nuclear state, current and former Chinese and American officials said.

In a sign of his displeasure, Mr. Xi has cultivated better relations with Ms. Park, the South Korean president, traveling to Seoul for a state visit in 2014.

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who served as the American ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011, said there was a generational divide among Chinese officials about how to deal with North Korea. “The older apparatchiks would defend the North Korean line,” he said. “The younger ones wanted this issue to go away. There’s no emotional connection, there’s no war being waged.”

In recent months, Mr. Xi extended several olive branches to Mr. Kim, concerned that the relationship had deteriorated to the point that Mr. Kim might lash out again, American and Chinese diplomats said.

At the parade in October, Mr. Kim stood next to Mr. Xi’s envoy, smiling and waving. He spoke of a “blood-tied friendship” and said that “bilateral ties are more than neighborliness,” according to coverage in the North Korean news media.

The decision solidified Mr. Xi’s position as China’s most powerful leader in decades after only five years of leading the country, making it harder for rivals to challenge him and his policies.

By enshrining Mr. Xi’s ideas as “a new component of the party’s guide for action,” the party is putting Mr. Xi on a doctrinal pedestal alongside Mao and Deng. Until Tuesday, Mao and Deng were the only Chinese leaders whose names appeared in the constitution’s list of fundamental doctrines.

“The outcome of this clash of national ambitions will be one of the great, perhaps perilous stories of the next several decades,” said David M. Lampton, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

the pomp will also be a chance for Mr. Xi to showcase his “China Dream” — a vision of his nation joining or perhaps supplanting the United States as a superpower leading the world.

Mr. Xi is expected to propose some version of what he has called a “new type of great power relations,” the idea that China and the United States should share global leadership as equals and break a historical pattern of conflict between rising and established powers.

Mr. Xi has positioned China as a stable alternative to the United States, willing to take on the obligations of global leadership and invest in big infrastructure projects across Asia and Europe much as the United States did after World War II.

Mr. Xi is now the unquestioned paramount leader of China, Professor Yan added, while Mr. Trump only “represents himself.”

“The word ‘partnership’ has a long and sad history in the vocabulary of U.S.-China relations,” Professor Lampton said. “American politicians since have avoided the word partnership.”

In the absence of elections, Communist Party officials in China rise up the ranks based on how well they deliver on the party’s priorities, at least in theory. For years, the top priority was economic growth

Local officials plowed money into the highways, ports and power plants that manufacturers needed, turning China into the world’s factory.

Under Mr. Xi, government priorities have shifted toward self-sufficiency and the use of industrial robots, something that Chinese leaders believe is critical to escaping the middle-income trap, in which a country can no longer compete in low-wage manufacturing because of rising wages but has not yet made the leap to the value-added products of high-income countries.

some Chinese companies purchased robots that don’t work well and exaggerated their success to get government subsidies and curry favor with politicians. Directives from party officials with little expertise in robotics fetishize machines beyond their actual usefulness.

Those unskilled laborers — who will increasingly be replaced by robots, according to China’s grand strategy — present an economic challenge and a threat to political stability

What many Chinese businesses wanted most, she said, was “invisible infrastructure”: a predictable judicial system, fair access to bank credit and land, and regulations that are applied without regard to political connections

Her findings, reported in detail in “The Gilded Cage: Techno-State Capitalism in China,” which will be published next fall, suggest that Beijing’s pronouncements about amazing technological advancement should be viewed with a touch of skepticism.

Mr. Xi had a privileged childhood as the son of a top Communist Party official. But the Cultural Revolution shattered that sheltered life; he was sent to a remote village for seven years, where he did hard labor and slept in a hillside cave home. As a result, he can claim a familiarity with rural people and rural problems that few world leaders can even imagine.

One of Mr. Xi’s most celebrated campaigns has been a vow to stamp out extreme poverty, a tacit acknowledgment that China’s economic miracle has left hundreds of millions of rural farmers behind

Some corporate managers complained that government subsidies often flowed to politically connected firms and were wasted, while others grumbled that government directives were unpredictable and ill informed.

Only 30 percent of working Chinese adults have high school diplomas, although 80 percent of young people are getting them now, according to Scott Rozelle, a co-author of “Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise.”

more than 600 million Chinese people scrape by on the equivalent of $140 per month.

Last year, Mr. Xi declared “complete victory” in eradicating extreme poverty in China, but skepticism about his success abounds. Some experts on China report that local officials gave out cash to rural families — one-time payments that got them temporarily over the poverty line — instead of initiating badly needed structural reforms.

“Rural Chinese in many ways are like the lowest class in a policy-driven caste system,” Mr. Rozelle told me. Nevertheless, even a flawed program to address rural poverty is better than no program at all.

He set out to save his rudderless Communist Party by cracking down on graft and bringing wayward nouveaux riches back into the fold by recruiting them as party members. He ordered chief executives to contribute more toward “common prosperity” and showed what could happen to those who didn’t toe the party line.

Mr. Xi’s crackdown went too far. Increasingly, foreign investors and Chinese entrepreneurs are fleeing. Coupled with a draconian zero-Covid strategy, Mr. Xi’s policies have sent the economy into a tailspin.

More worrisome still is the return of an atmosphere of fear and sycophancy not seen since Chairman Mao’s time. A businessman who was critical of Mr. Xi was sent to prison for 18 years. The era of relative openness to intellectual debate and foreign ideas appears to have come to an end.

id another despot like Mao, have gone out the window so Mr. Xi can have more time in power. Mr. Xi has been called a modern-day emperor, the chairman of everything and the most powerful man in the world

Yuhua Wang, a political scientist at Harvard who is author of the book “The Rise and Fall of Imperial China,” released this month. Mr. Wang studied 2,000 years of Chinese history and discovered, somewhat counterintuitively, that China’s central government has always been the weakest under its longest-serving rulers.

Emperors, he explains, have always stayed in power by weakening the elites who might have overthrown them — the very people who are capable of building a strong and competent government.

“One can argue that he has good intentions,” Mr. Wang told me of Mr. Xi. But the tactics he has used to maintain power — crushing critics, micromanaging businesses, whipping up nationalist fervor and walling China off from the world — may end up weakening China in the end.

Being named the “core” cements his pre-eminent status, as the party prepares for a pivotal congress a year from now that is expected to give Mr. Xi a second five-year term. Some political observers say Mr. Xi is trying to command that process to surround himself with allies, sideline rivals and ensure his rule is less fettered.

“President Xi Jinping is moving in the right direction,” Batten said, “but we know that there are factions within the Communist Party that are trying to hold things back.”

will appear in front of the media. One thing seems certain: President Xi Jinping will be re-elected party leader.

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“This could destroy China and the Chinese people. So I cannot stay silent. I have to let them know that there are people against it, and to do so publicly,” protested Li Datong, a retired newspaper editor who became the face of liberal opposition to Xi’s power grab when he published a combative open letter attacking the move.

“The stakes could not be any higher; renewed hostility among political rivals and the repression of political dissent puts China at risk of repeating the tragedies of the Mao era,” Huang added.

“If somehow there is a weakness to be found, I think that his enemies will circle and go in for the kill. That’s the greatest danger to him at this point,” Economy said.

For those who opposed Xi and his crackdown on human rights and dissent it boded ill, she said. “I think it’s very bleak, the outlook politically.”

There has been no national debate as to whether a leader should be allowed to stay on for as long as they choose. Quietly but surely Xi Jinping has changed the way his country is governed, with himself well and truly at the core.

Mr Xi's possible third term is not the only item the National People's Congress is likely to approve. It was also expected to: confirm China's new government line-up for the next five years, kicking off Xi Jinping's second term as president ratify a law to set up a new powerful anti-corruption agency ratify the inclusion of the president's political philosophy - "Xi Jinping thought" - in the constitution

He also fought corruption, punishing more than a million party members - which has helped his popularity among some. At the same time, however, China has clamped down on many emerging freedoms, increasing its state surveillance and censorship programs. Critics also say Mr Xi has used the anti-corruption purge to sideline political rivals.

Mr. Xi seemed to strike a positive tone, telling him that China “attached great importance to developing a friendly relationship with North Korea” and was seeking “calm” on the Korean Peninsula

The surprise meeting is believed to have been the first encounter between Mr. Xi and a senior North Korean official since 2013, when he met with Choe Ryong-hae, who was then a special envoy of the Workers’ Party in the North.

China is the biggest benefactor of the North’s rudimentary economy.

The Obama administration considers China’s enforcement of United Nations sanctions on North Korea, imposed as punishment for its nuclear program, vital to their success.

Based on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not.

A risk associated with Thucydides’s Trap is that business as usual—not just an unexpected, extraordinary event—can trigger large-scale conflict. When a rising power is threatening to displace a ruling power, standard crises that would otherwise be contained, like the assassination of an archduke in 1914, can initiate a cascade of reactions that, in turn, produce outcomes none of the parties would otherwise have chosen.

The preeminent geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent Russia. It is the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order, which has provided unprecedented great-power peace and prosperity for the past 70 years. As Singapore’s late leader, Lee Kuan Yew, observed, “the size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”

More than 2,400 years ago, the Athenian historian Thucydides offered a powerful insight: “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.

Note that Thucydides identified two key drivers of this dynamic: the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway, on the one hand, and the fear, insecurity, and determination to defend the status quo this engenders in the established power, on the other.

However unimaginable conflict seems, however catastrophic the potential consequences for all actors, however deep the cultural empathy among leaders, even blood relatives, and however economically interdependent states may be—none of these factors is sufficient to prevent war, in 1914 or today.

Four of the 16 cases in our review did not end in bloodshed. Those successes, as well as the failures, offer pertinent lessons for today’s world leaders. Escaping the Trap requires tremendous effort

Lee Kuan Yew, the world’s premier China watcher and a mentor to Chinese leaders since Deng Xiaoping. Before his death in March, the founder of Singapore put the odds of China continuing to grow at several times U.S. rates for the next decade and beyond as “four chances in five.

Could China become #1? In what year could China overtake the United States to become, say, the largest economy in the world, or primary engine of global growth, or biggest market for luxury goods?

Could China Become #1? Manufacturer: Exporter: Trading nation: Saver: Holder of U.S. debt: Foreign-direct-investment destination: Energy consumer: Oil importer: Carbon emitter: Steel producer: Auto market: Smartphone market: E-commerce market: Luxury-goods market:   Internet user: Fastest supercomputer: Holder of foreign reserves: Source of initial public offerings: Primary engine of global growth: Economy: Most are stunned to learn that on each of these 20 indicators, China has already surpassed the U.S.

In 1980, China had 10 percent of America’s GDP as measured by purchasing power parity; 7 percent of its GDP at current U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 6 percent of its exports. The foreign currency held by China, meanwhile, was just one-sixth the size of America’s reserves. The answers for the second column: By 2014, those figures were 101 percent of GDP; 60 percent at U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 106 percent of exports. China’s reserves today are 28 times larger than America’s.

On whether China’s leaders are serious about displacing the United States as the top power in Asia in the foreseeable future, Lee answered directly: “Of course. Why not … how could they not aspire to be number one in Asia and in time the world?” And about accepting its place in an international order designed and led by America, he said absolutely not: “China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.”

As the United States emerged as the dominant power in the Western hemisphere in the 1890s, how did it behave? Future President Theodore Roosevelt personified a nation supremely confident that the 100 years ahead would be an American century. Over a decade that began in 1895 with the U.S. secretary of state declaring the United States “sovereign on this continent,” America liberated Cuba; threatened Britain and Germany with war to force them to accept American positions on disputes in Venezuela and Canada; backed an insurrection that split Colombia to create a new state of Panama (which immediately gave the U.S. concessions to build the Panama Canal); and attempted to overthrow the government of Mexico, which was supported by the United Kingdom and financed by London bankers. In the half century that followed, U.S. military forces intervened in “our hemisphere” on more than 30 separate occasions to settle economic or territorial disputes in terms favorable to Americans, or oust leaders they judged unacceptable

When Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s fast march to the market in 1978, he announced a policy known as “hide and bide.” What China needed most abroad was stability and access to markets. The Chinese would thus “bide our time and hide our capabilities,” which Chinese military officers sometimes paraphrased as getting strong before getting even.

With the arrival of China’s new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, the era of “hide and bide” is over

Many observers outside China have missed the great divergence between China’s economic performance and that of its competitors over the seven years since the financial crisis of 2008 and Great Recession. That shock caused virtually all other major economies to falter and decline. China never missed a year of growth, sustaining an average growth rate exceeding 8 percent. Indeed, since the financial crisis, nearly 40 percent of all growth in the global economy has occurred in just one country: China

What Xi Jinping calls the “China Dream” expresses the deepest aspirations of hundreds of millions of Chinese, who wish to be not only rich but also powerful. At the core of China’s civilizational creed is the belief—or conceit—that China is the center of the universe. In the oft-repeated narrative, a century of Chinese weakness led to exploitation and national humiliation by Western colonialists and Japan. In Beijing’s view, China is now being restored to its rightful place, where its power commands recognition of and respect for China’s core interests.

Last November, in a seminal meeting of the entire Chinese political and foreign-policy establishment, including the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi provided a comprehensive overview of his vision of China’s role in the world. The display of self-confidence bordered on hubris. Xi began by offering an essentially Hegelian conception of the major historical trends toward multipolarity (i.e. not U.S. unipolarity) and the transformation of the international system (i.e. not the current U.S.-led system). In his words, a rejuvenated Chinese nation will build a “new type of international relations” through a “protracted” struggle over the nature of the international order. In the end, he assured his audience that “the growing trend toward a multipolar world will not change.”

Given objective trends, realists see an irresistible force approaching an immovable object. They ask which is less likely: China demanding a lesser role in the East and South China Seas than the United States did in the Caribbean or Atlantic in the early 20th century, or the U.S. sharing with China the predominance in the Western Pacific that America has enjoyed since World War II?

At this point, the established script for discussion of policy challenges calls for a pivot to a new strategy (or at least slogan), with a short to-do list that promises peaceful and prosperous relations with China. Shoehorning this challenge into that template would demonstrate only one thing: a failure to understand the central point I’m trying to make

What strategists need most at the moment is not a new strategy, but a long pause for reflection. If the tectonic shift caused by China’s rise poses a challenge of genuinely Thucydidean proportions, declarations about “rebalancing,” or revitalizing “engage and hedge,” or presidential hopefuls’ calls for more “muscular” or “robust” variants of the same, amount to little more than aspirin treating cancer. Future historians will compare such assertions to the reveries of British, German, and Russian leaders as they sleepwalked into 1914

The rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation

Success will require not just a new slogan, more frequent summits of presidents, and additional meetings of departmental working groups. Managing this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at the highest level in both countries. It will entail a depth of mutual understanding not seen since the Henry Kissinger-Zhou Enlai conversations in the 1970s. Most significantly, it will mean more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.

China’s economy depends heavily on cheap coal-fired electricity, and the country has a history of balking at outside reviews of its industries. China has also been plagued by major corruption cases, particularly among coal companies.

Domestic and external pressures have driven the Chinese government to take firmer action to curb emissions from fossil fuels, especially coal. Growing public anger about the noxious air that often envelops Beijing and many other Chinese cities has prompted the government to introduce restrictions on coal and other sources of smog, with the side benefit of reducing carbon dioxide pollution.

The climate deal will be a substantial, if rare, bright spot in a wide-ranging summit meeting that is expected to be dominated by potential sources of friction between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi.

The president plans to raise a number of contentious topics on Friday, White House aides said, including cyberattacks on American companies and government agencies, China’s increasingly aggressive reclamation of islands and atolls in disputed areas of the South China Sea, and Mr. Xi’s clampdown on dissidents and lawyers in China.

Under a cap-and-trade system, a concept created by American economists, governments place a cap on the amount of carbon pollution that may be emitted annually. Companies can then buy and sell permits to pollute. Western economists have long backed the idea as a market-driven way to push industry to cleaner forms of energy, by making polluting energy more expensive.

including the title of a "core" leader of China, w

The Central Committee also elects the Party's top leader -

the Politburo Standing Committee is expected to be nearly completely refreshed.

However, there is some speculation Mr Xi might break with tradition this time round and delay this step.

in reality many of these people have already been handpicked by the current leadership, and the committee just approves their edict.

and we may see the enshrining of his policies, known as "Xi Jinping Thought", in the party charter.

2, Mr Xi has spearheaded a sweeping anti-corruption campaign which has seen more than a million officials disciplined.

"Xi Dada", or Uncle Xi.

At home, China's five-year economic reform plan is still in play, as is Mr Xi's anti-corruption campaign and growing authoritarian rule.

This ranges from the controversial South China Sea expansion and the One Belt One Road trade project, to China's positioning as the alternative superpower compared to the US under President Donald Trump.But one tricky question that remains is North Korea and its ongoing nuclear crisis

its new leadership would still be "mired in internal debate" on how to handle its hot-tempered neighbour.

The list includes Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, all of whom have abandoned most pretenses that they rule according to the people’s will.

There are many reasons for such moves by Mr. Xi and others — including protecting their power and perks in an age of unrest, terrorism and war amplified by new technologies — but a significant one is that few countries have the standing or authority, morally or otherwise, to speak out — least of all, critics say, the United States

She and other experts described this “authoritarian reversion” as a global contagion that has undermined the abiding faith that forging liberal democracies and market economies was the surest path to prosperity and equality.

Authoritarian leaders now act with greater impunity — or at least less worry about international isolation.

President Trump’s critics say that while he may not yet have eroded democracy in the United States, his populist appeals and nativist policies, his palpable aversion to the media and traditional checks on power, and his stated admiration for some of the strongest of strongmen are cut from the same cloth.

The trend toward authoritarianism, while specific to each country’s history, is rooted in insecurities and fears afflicting the world today: globalization and rising inequality, the stunning and scary advances in technology, the disorienting chaos and extreme violence of civil wars like Syria’s, separatism and terror.

Mr. Xi, as a result, believes that only stability can ensure his vision of China’s revival and emergence as the world’s power. “He seems to genuinely believe that he’s the only person who can achieve this vision,” she said. In last fall’s Communist Party congress, Mr. Xi even presented China as a new model for the developing world — a thinly veiled argument that the United States and Europe were no longer as attractive as they once were.

Factional purges risk shifting political norms from consensus to zero-sum, and sometimes life-or-death, infighting.And Mr. Xi is undermining the institutionalism that made China’s authoritarianism unusually resilient. Collective leadership and orderly succession, both put in place after Mao Zedong’s disastrous tenure, have allowed for relatively effective and stable governing.

So China is instead promoting “ideology and collective social values” that equate the government with Chinese culture, according to research by the China scholar Heike Holbig and Mr. Gilley. Patriotic songs and school textbooks have proliferated. So have mentions of “Xi Jinping Thought,” now an official ideology.

China is experimenting with a form of authoritarianism that, if successful, could close the seemingly unbridgeable gap between what its citizens demand and what it can deliver.Authoritarian governments are, by definition, unaccountable. But some towns and small cities in China are opening limited, controlled channels of public participation. For example, a program called “Mayor’s Mailboxes” allows citizens to voice demands or complaints, and rewards officials who comply.The program, one study found, significantly improved the quality of governing and citizens’ happiness with the state. No one would call these towns democratic. But it felt enough like democracy to satisfy some.

Lawmakers are also expected to enshrine Communist Party rule as a constitutional principle, approve the creation of a powerful anticorruption agency that expands CCP oversight over all public servants, and review plans for restructuring China’s sprawling bureaucracy

Vocal discontent with his efforts to consolidate power appears largely limited to China’s urban elite

State media has defended the constitutional revision, saying it brings the tenure for the presidency in line with Mr. Xi’s other posts, party chief and military-commission chairman, from which he derives his true authority.

Mr. Xi also strengthens his professed commitment to “rule of law” and his self-styled image as a fearless punisher of corrupt officials and other miscreants, some legal experts say

In 1992, nearly a third of lawmakers voted against or abstained from a motion to approve the Three Gorges Dam project, which later caused environmental damage and displaced more than a million people.

As China’s political elites converge on Beijing this week for a seminal Communist Party meeting, President Xi Jinping is sending a stern message to China and the world: I am in charge, and nothing can stand in my way.

Mr. Xi, who is all but certain next week to be handed another five-year term as China’s leader, is leaving nothing to chance.

Beijing has been placed on lockdown. Security officials — wielding assault rifles, batons and shields — have held drills across the country. Online censorship has intensified, and tools to circumvent China’s Great Firewall disrupted

Taken together, the efforts show a president who is deeply concerned by what he perceives as threats to China’s security and eager to showcase his vision of an all-powerful Communist Party.

The security measures for the party congress show that Mr. Xi will not hesitate to use a “heavy hand on those who dare to exist with differing views,” said Frances Eve

Retaining Wang would have set a precedent for any future power play by Xi, 64, to stay in the top job beyond 2022.