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“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 supposed humiliation of attending the sack of Liege by the Burgundian army cost him little; and he avoided the second condition imposed by Charles—the award of Champagne and Brie to Charles de France—by persuading his brother to accept the more remote province of Guyenne in their place

Yet Philip the Good felt himself increasingly isolated by French negotiations with Frederick III and the Swiss cantons. The opportune arrival of the Dauphin allowed him to reassert his influence at the French court and to arbitrate between father and son

Louis XI appeared to represent all the forces of feudal and Burgundian reaction

The independent duchy of Brittany possessed its own governmental institutions, and its ruler, Francis II, refused anything but simple homage to both Charles VII and his successor

If his royal connections and foreign ambitions had induced this capricious and luxury-loving prince to avoid open conflict with the crown, his impetuous son, John of Calabria, was foremost in every plot and affray

Louis XI might dismiss his father’s favourites; but he could not afford to reverse his policy. He refused support for John of Calabria’s ill-fated venture in Italy, quarrelled with Philip the Good, and disputed the right of Francis II to control the church in Brittany.

The King did indeed learn much from the League of the Common Weal

He took advantage of a misunderstanding between his ineffective brother and Francis II to recover Normandy, and at the same time distracted Burgundy by encouraging the revolt of the cities of Dinant and Liege. Having bought off Brittany and Charles de France, he sought to detach them from their Burgundian alliance by revealing the details of their defection

Louis XI also anticipated later methods of economic warfare. He deprived his Burgundian enemy of specie and procured the withdrawal of the support afforded him by the Medici bank. His concessions to English, Swiss and Hanseatic merchants were designed to detach them from Burgundian commerce

In these years Louis XI was conducting equally complex negotiations in Aragon and England

Charles VII exiled him to his government in Dauphiné. The nine years he spent there were occupied with strengthening the provincial administration and resisting the authority of the Crown

Pot-bellied and spindle-shanked, Louis XI was an unlikely figure, either as a monster of vice or, as he described himself, as the restorer of the splendours of Charlemagne and St. Louis

Louis employed the agents of the former financier, Jacques Coeur, whose condemnation under Charles VII he declared invalid. From Tours he drew the merchant financiers of the Beaune and Briçonnet families, and from Berry the Bochetels, who founded a notable line of royal secretaries

It is doubtful whether Louis XI had any general plan to transform the social order, but he found the middle classes his most convenient allies against the forces of disorder from above and below

In the towns Louis XI accelerated the trend to the formation of urban patriciates. He widened the special form of ennoblement available to municipal councillors.

From the number of national assemblies convoked by Louis XI it is sometimes conjectured that his government proceeded by consultative methods. But of the twelve such bodies convened by the King only one was a full Estates General, the others being merely assemblies of notables

The Estates General of Tours in 1468 was skilfully won over to the royal cause, and persuaded that to grant Normandy to the King’s brother would be to detach it from France and expose it to English and Burgundian influence

Trade prospered under Louis XI, but the recovery of agriculture was slow in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War. Choisnet had written in the Rosier des Guerres that “the King should see for himself the condition of his people, and should watch over them as a good gardener does his garden.”

While Louis won over Warwick, and reconciled the King-Maker with Margaret of Anjou to secure the brief Lancastrian restoration of 1470, the Burgundian Duke responded by publicly welcoming the return of Henry VI, and secredy promoting the triumph of his Yorkist brother-in-law, Edward IV.

As Charles VII had promoted the trade fairs of Lyon to ruin Geneva, so Louis established fairs at Caen and Rouen to challenge those of Bruges and Antwerp

Charles the Rash pursued chimerical schemes in Alsace, and clashed with the German Emperor. His preoccupation with affairs in the electorate of Cologne prevented him from supporting an English invasion of France in 1475, and Louis bought off Edward IV with the Treaty of Picquigny

Maximilian, the son of Frederick III, married the Burgundian heiress, Mary, and defended her lands against France until the Treaty of Arras brought peace in 1482. In all his calculations the Spider King could not have foreseen that Philip, the issue of this match, would marry the daughter and heiress of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile— an alliance which itself was in part a response to Louis’ policy in Catalonia

A new France had been nurtured by measures that seem at times not merely generations but centuries in advance of their age. Yet for all the surprising modernity of his policies, the manner in which Louis died revealed the extent to which he was still in thrall to the forces of the past.

The arcana of kingship which he bad penetrated were not of this kind. The first of modern national rulers went to his death surrounded by all the trappings of magic

Since the days of Deng, the mantra of Beijing’s top policy makers had been “reform and opening up,” which stressed integration with the global economy. Xi, however, wants to limit that integration, or at least engage with the wider world on different terms

Perhaps he thinks that a heftier role for the state could help firm his hold over party and government. “He wanted more control, and he thought having a big state sector was an element of achieving that,” Lardy explained.

Deng Xiaoping, one of Xi’s predecessors, who launched China’s now-famous pro-market reforms in the late 1970s, understood that the country was destitute because it was strangled by the Communist state and cut off from the world. Deng and his successors steadily lifted controls on private investment, trade, and foreign business. Unfettered by overbearing state planners, China’s entrepreneurial energies, mixed with imported capital and technology, unleashed an explosion of growth and wealth.

“He is feeling under siege,” James McGregor, the chairman of the China arm of the consulting firm APCO Worldwide, told me. Chinese officials “are eliminating all vulnerabilities to the outside world, or reducing them as much as they can.”

In other words, China will stay open for business—if that business helps protect its own interests.

an economist at the research firm Capital Economics, dubbed the self-sufficiency drive a “lose-lose” for China’s economy, because it diverts resources from more productive purposes and forces firms to choose suppliers for political, not economic, reasons

This dovetails nicely with another of Xi’s goals, self-sufficiency. China, he believes, should produce homemade substitutes to key products now bought from overseas—especially microchips and other critical technologie

To protect national security, China needs “independent, controllable, safe, and reliable” supply chains, Xi said in an April speech, with “at least one alternative source for key products and supply channels, to create a necessary industrial backup system.” Localizing technology has been a long-standing Chinese ambition, but China watchers think Xi has thrown that plan into hyperdrive

All of this adds up to a grand experiment in the kind of state-directed development unseen since the days of Mao Zedong.

Classically trained economists frown upon Xi’s program. He’s ticking just about every box of what not to do to propel incomes and innovation

et we shouldn’t immediately dismiss his plans as doomed to fail. As a gargantuan market of 1.4 billion people, China can develop local companies of size and scope without bothering much with the outside world. (Ma’s Ant is a prime example.) If the program works, economists may have to rewrite their textbooks.

et the undertaking is fraught with risks. By favoring the state sector, Xi is funneling valuable money and talent to notoriously bloated and inefficient government enterprises instead of far more nimble and creative private firms

Xi wishes to reduce China’s reliance on other countries, especially potential adversaries such as the United States. From Beijing’s perspective, the Trump administration’s restrictions on technology sales to the telecom giant Huawei Technologies and other Chinese outfits exposed the dangers of counting on untrustworthy foreigners, and Xi intends to ensure that China’s advance can’t be upset by politicians in Washington or elsewhere.

learly, Xi is preparing for protracted conflict between the world’s two largest economies by attempting to fireproof China from measures President-elect Joe Biden might use against him. Yet in doing so

if Xi succeeds in replacing more of what China purchases from the world, he will also undermine the economic rationale for continued engagement with a brutal authoritarian regime. Xi thinks he is shielding China against isolation. He could instead be causing it.

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].”

We can’t rule out, however, that Xi sincerely believes in the course he’s taking. (Indeed, the two explanations are not mutually exclusive.) It’s easy to discount the CCP’s Marxist pronouncements as a necessary but rhetorical cover for the country’s raging capitalism, but Xi regularly reminds the nation that it is socialist, and praises the successes of China’s version of the ideology.

Xi and his propaganda machine are presenting China’s authoritarian governance as a more appropriate model for the world than democratic capitalism, better able to create a more harmonious, just, and prosperous society, and more capable of achieving great tasks, such as conquering the coronavirus pandemic, than a dysfunctional, decadent, and declining America.

this current movement could follow those of the Communist past, which had “a pattern of first cracking down on whomever is identified as the corrupt, and then cracking down on whomever is identified as the impure, and then widening the lens to a more broad mass movement.”

Xi “may believe the recent wave of crackdowns is necessary to bring about socialism at home to differentiate from capitalism as practiced in the West.”

That raises the ugly prospect of the competition between the U.S. and China becoming more like the Cold War—a battle between ideologically opposed political, economic, and social systems.

That is, if Xi’s new China succeeds. By attacking the wealthy, constraining private enterprise, and strangling education, Xi could discourage entrepreneurship and independent thinking, the magic ingredients for technological breakthroughs and innovative products. Starting a company is already a risky business. Why attempt it if you’ll end up in trouble? By experimenting with Chinese society, Xi is gambling that his bid for social control won’t smother the incentives and initiative that the economy requires to excel.

The West is convinced that political and social freedoms and economic progress are inseparable. Xi and his Communist cadres do not agree, and, in their minds, they have China’s four-decade record of triumphs to prove their point. China’s leader appears to believe that greater top-down control will ensure his country’s continued ascent, not derail it.

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.

Although China is growing stronger, Mr. Xi has said, there are still many ways in which “the West is strong and the East is weak,”

“Xi Jinping strikes me as ruthless but cautious in erecting a durable personal legacy,”

In the eyes of China’s leaders, he said, “the response to the coronavirus was really a textbook example to the party of how you could bring things together in a short amount of time and force through a program.”

The Biden administration has signaled that it wants to press China on human rights and compete with it on technological advancements and regional influence in Asia

At home, China is grappling with an aging population and trying to overhaul an engine of economic growth that uses too much investment and energy for too little gain and too much pollution.

the Chinese legislature appears poised to back plans to drastically rewrite election rules for Hong Kong, removing the vestiges of local democracy in the former British colony.

Mr. Xi, 67, appears likely to claim a third five-year term in power, bulldozing past the term limits that had been put in place to restrain leaders after Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

Having emerged triumphantly from the pandemic, Mr. Xi will look to further centralize his power,

The congress is part of the party’s stagecraft this year to reinforce the view that Mr. Xi is essential to safely steering China through momentous changes. Official Chinese media have recently hailed Mr. Xi’s campaign to end rural poverty as a major success

in July, Mr. Xi will preside over the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, celebrations that are likely to cast him as a historic leader like Mao and Deng.

Mr. Xi has portrayed China as moving closer by the year to regaining its rightful historic status as a great power, while established powers are riven by dysfunction.

“There is a vivid contrast between the order of China and the chaos of the West.”

officials have used such phrases markedly more often in recent months, underscoring the confidence — critics say hubris — enveloping the Chinese government.

The health of the economy will be crucial to whether that confidence survives. Government advisers have suggested that average growth could be 5 percent or higher over the next five years, if things go well.

But the country might not sustain that level of growth unless it becomes more innovative and reduces its reliance on investment in heavy industry and infrastructure,

China’s aging population will place growing demands on pension funds, health care and accumulated savings.

Such economic pressures could corrode public support for the party in the years ahead

Leaders in Beijing appear much more focused on the United States, which they see as remaining bent on hobbling China’s ascent, regardless of who is in the White House.

Chinese policymakers were alarmed when the Trump administration pulled back Chinese companies’ access to American technology. Many say that the United States will keep trying to hold back China by restricting its access to “chokehold technologies,” such as advanced semiconductors and the machines to make them.

“Containment and oppression from the United States is a major threat,” said Chen Yixin, a security official who served as Mr. Xi’s policy enforcer in Wuhan

“This is both an unplanned clash and a protracted war.”

Mr. Xi’s plan for addressing these shortcomings is to expand domestic innovation and markets to be less dependent on high-tech imports

He could dominate for years yet, making his decisions, or misjudgments, all the more consequential.

“Internally there are now few sources of opposition — no sources of opposition,” Xiao Gongqin, a historian in Shanghai, said in a telephone interview, “so the leader must be able to stay even-keeled.”

He is facing escalating Western criticism of Chinese policies toward ethnic Uighurs in Xin­jiang, where as many as 3 million people have been put into reeducation camps. He is dealing with an increasingly assertive Taiwan at the same time a pro-democracy movement swells in Hong Kong.

Xi is trying to harden the party’s internal resolve to fend off these threats — most acutely, a United States that many observers say seems intent on containing China.“Xi has a legion of internal critics, including over his handling of relations with Washington,” McGregor said. “One way to bring them to heel is by demanding fealty and loyalty to the party, and by extension, to himself.”

Since taking power, Xi has rewritten the party’s rules — including ending term limits, setting himself up to be leader indefinitely — and launched huge study campaigns to instill his personal ideology across society, starting with toddlers, through schools and universities and through the Central Committee Party School in Beijing. The party has developed an app through which Chinese can study “Xi Jinping Thought.”

China’s leaders have intensively studied the collapse of the Soviet Union — Xi even had top officials watch a four-part documentary about it soon after he came into office — and concluded that Mikhail Gorbachev made a strategic error by opting to liberalize rather than tighten political controls.

Meanwhile, the party’s increasingly repressive actions inside China, such as the crackdown in the Xinjiang region and the growing use of surveillance technology, “reflect heightened fear and insecurity, not a self-confident China aspiring to enhanced leadership in global and regional affairs,”

As the trade negotiations rumble on, more people in China are subscribing to the view that the dispute is about geopolitics rather than economics, scholars say. That it’s all about keeping China down.

This theory got a boost from none other than John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, late last year. “This is not just an economic issue,” he told Fox Business. “This is not just talking about tariffs and the terms of trade. This is a question of power.”

Because of this sense of insecurity, party leaders view the Trump administration’s declaration of a trade war not as a purely economic matter but as a broader, strategic effort to contain China

The perception gap between China and the United States is huge, the academic said, searching around for the appropriate English analogy before arriving at “women are from Venus, men are from Mars.” 

This is because the United States looks at the development and wealth in Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, and at Chinese technology companies like Alibaba and Huawei, and sees an increasingly powerful economic player.

But Beijing doesn’t look at the situation only through the lens of the past few decades, the academic said. It looks at it from the perspective of the past few centuries. 

China can’t back down anymore. If you read the editorials, you see that China is determined,

“I think some would even compare it with the unequal treaties of 100 years ago,” he continued, harking back to the British victory in the Opium Wars of the 19th century and the occupations of the early 20th century.

With these old humiliations still raw, party leaders are trying to fuel an inner resolve

“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.”

During this time, eight American presidents assumed, or hoped, that China would eventually bend to what were considered the established rules of modernization: Prosperity would fuel popular demands for political freedom and bring China into the fold of democratic nations. Or the Chinese economy would falter under the weight of authoritarian rule and bureaucratic rot.

China’s Communist leaders have defied expectations again and again. They embraced capitalism even as they continued to call themselves Marxists. They used repression to maintain power but without stifling entrepreneurship or innovation. Surrounded by foes and rivals, they avoided war, with one brief exception, even as they fanned nationalist sentiment at home. And they presided over 40 years of uninterrupted growth, often with unorthodox policies the textbooks said would fail.

There is no simple explanation for how China’s leaders pulled this off. There was foresight and luck, skill and violent resolve, but perhaps most important was the fear — a sense of crisis among Mao’s successors that they never shook, and that intensified after the Tiananmen Square massacre and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

China’s Communists studied and obsessed over the fate of their old ideological allies in Moscow, determined to learn from their mistakes. They drew two lessons: The party needed to embrace “reform” to survive — but “reform” must never include democratization.

China has veered between these competing impulses ever since, between opening up and clamping down, between experimenting with change and resisting it, always pulling back before going too far in either direction for fear of running aground.

The careers of these men from Moganshan highlight an important aspect of China’s success: It turned its apparatchiks into capitalists.

Party leaders called this go-slow, experimental approach “crossing the river by feeling the stones” — allowing farmers to grow and sell their own crops, for example, while retaining state ownership of the land; lifting investment restrictions in “special economic zones,” while leaving them in place in the rest of the country; or introducing privatization by selling only minority stakes in state firms at first.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, tried to break the hold of these bureaucrats on the economy by opening up the political system. Decades later, Chinese officials still take classes on why that was a mistake. The party even produced a documentary series on the subject in 2006, distributing it on classified DVDs for officials at all levels to watch.

Afraid to open up politically but unwilling to stand still, the party found another way. It moved gradually and followed the pattern of the compromise at Moganshan, which left the planned economy intact while allowing a market economy to flourish and outgrow it.

American economists were skeptical. Market forces needed to be introduced quickly, they argued; otherwise, the bureaucracy would mobilize to block necessary changes. After a visit to China in 1988, the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman called the party’s strategy “an open invitation to corruption and inefficiency.”

The United States and Japan, both routinely vilified by party propagandists, became major trading partners and were important sources of aid, investment and expertise

At the same time, the party invested in education, expanding access to schools and universities, and all but eliminating illiteracy

mainland China now produces more graduates in science and engineering every year than the United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan combined.

In cities like Shanghai, Chinese schoolchildren outperform peers around the world. For many parents, though, even that is not enough. Because of new wealth, a traditional emphasis on education as a path to social mobility and the state’s hypercompetitive college entrance exam, most students also enroll in after-school tutoring programs — a market worth $125 billion, according to one study, or as much as half the government’s annual military budget.

party made changes after Mao’s death that fell short of free elections or independent courts yet were nevertheless significant

The party introduced term limits and mandatory retirement ages, for example, making it easier to flush out incompetent officials. And it revamped the internal report cards it used to evaluate local leaders for promotions and bonuses, focusing them almost exclusively on concrete economic targets.

These seemingly minor adjustments had an outsize impact, injecting a dose of accountability — and competition — into the political system, said Yuen Yuen Ang, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. “China created a unique hybrid,” she said, “an autocracy with democratic characteristics.”

They were rewarded with soaring tax revenues and opportunities to enrich their friends, their relatives and themselves. A wave of officials abandoned the state and went into business. Over time, the party elite amassed great wealth, which cemented its support for the privatization of much of the economy it once controlled.

The private sector now produces more than 60 percent of the nation’s economic output, employs over 80 percent of workers in cities and towns, and generates 90 percent of new jobs

the bureaucrats stay out of the way. “I basically don’t see them even once a year,” said James Ni, chairman and founder of Mlily, a mattress manufacturer in eastern China. “I’m creating jobs, generating tax revenue. Why should they bother me?”

even as he wraps himself in Deng’s legacy, Mr. Xi has set himself apart in an important way: Deng encouraged the party to seek help and expertise overseas, but Mr. Xi preaches self-reliance and warns of the threats posed by “hostile foreign forces.

China tapped into a wave of globalization sweeping the world and emerged as the world’s factory. China’s embrace of the internet, within limits, helped make it a leader in technology. And foreign advice helped China reshape its banks, build a legal system and create modern corporations.

It was a remarkable act of reinvention, one that eluded the Soviets. In both China and the Soviet Union, vast Stalinist bureaucracies had smothered economic growth, with officials who wielded unchecked power resisting change that threatened their privileges.

Mr. Lin was part of a torrent of investment from ethnic Chinese enclaves in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and beyond that washed over China — and gave it a leg up on other developing countries

The timing worked out for China, which opened up just as Taiwan was outgrowing its place in the global manufacturing chain. China benefited from Taiwan’s money, but also its managerial experience, technology and relationships with customers around the world. In effect, Taiwan jump-started capitalism in China and plugged it into the global economy.

Before long, the government in Taiwan began to worry about relying so much on its onetime enemy and tried to shift investment elsewhere. But the mainland was too cheap, too close and, with a common language and heritage, too familiar.

Now Taiwan finds itself increasingly dependent on a much more powerful China, which is pushing ever harder for unification, and the island’s future is uncertain

Many in Washington predicted that trade would bring political change. It did, but not in China. “Opening up” ended up strengthening the party’s hold on power rather than weakening it. The shock of China’s rise as an export colossus, however, was felt in factory towns around the world.

In the United States, economists say at least two million jobs disappeared as a result, many in districts that ended up voting for President Trump.

The pro-democracy movement in 1989 was the closest the party ever came to political liberalization after Mao’s death, and the crackdown that followed was the furthest it went in the other direction, toward repression and control. After the massacre, the economy stalled and retrenchment seemed certain. Yet three years later, Deng used a tour of southern China to wrestle the party back to “reform and opening up” once more. Many who had left the government, like Mr. Feng, suddenly found themselves leading the nation’s transformation from the outside, as its first generation of private entrepreneurs.

The fear is that Mr. Xi is attempting to rewrite the recipe behind China’s rise, replacing selective repression with something more severe.

The internet is an example of how it has benefited by striking a balance. The party let the nation go online with barely an inkling of what that might mean, then reaped the economic benefits while controlling the spread of information that could hurt it.

“The basic problem is, who is growth for?” said Mr. Xu, the retired official who wrote the Moganshan report. “We haven’t solved this problem.”

“The cost of censorship is quite limited compared to the great value created by the internet,” said Chen Tong, an industry pioneer. “We still get the information we need for economic progress.”

China is not the only country that has squared the demands of authoritarian rule with the needs of free markets. But it has done so for longer, at greater scale and with more convincing results than any other.

Washington is maneuvering to counter Beijing’s growing influence around the world, warning that a Chinese spending spree on global infrastructure comes with strings attached.

both left and right in America have portrayed China as the champion of an alternative global order, one that embraces autocratic values and undermines fair competition. It is a rare consensus for the United States, which is deeply divided about so much else, including how it has wielded power abroad in recent decades — and how it should do so now.

Mr. Xi, on the other hand, has shown no sign of abandoning what he calls “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Some in his corner have been itching to take on the United States since the 2008 financial crisis and see the Trump administration’s policies as proof of what they have always suspected — that America is determined to keep China down.

there is also widespread anxiety over the new acrimony, because the United States has long inspired admiration and envy in China, and because of a gnawing sense that the party’s formula for success may be faltering.

Prosperity has brought rising expectations in China; the public wants more than just economic growth. It wants cleaner air, safer food and medicine, better health care and schools, less corruption and greater equality. The party is struggling to deliver, and tweaks to the report cards it uses to measure the performance of officials hardly seem enough.

Now, many companies assign hundreds of employees to censorship duties — and China has become a giant on the global internet landscape.

Mr. Xi himself has acknowledged that the party must adapt, declaring that the nation is entering a “new era” requiring new methods. But his prescription has largely been a throwback to repression, including vast internment camps targeting Muslim ethnic minorities. “Opening up” has been replaced by an outward push, with huge loans that critics describe as predatory and other efforts to gain influence — or interfere — in the politics of other countries. At home, experimentation is out while political orthodoxy and discipline are in.

n effect, Mr. Xi seems to believe that China has been so successful that the party can return to a more conventional authoritarian posture — and that to survive and surpass the United States it must

Certainly, the momentum is still with the party. Over the past four decades, economic growth in China has been 10 times faster than in the United States, and it is still more than twice as fast. The party appears to enjoy broad public support, and many around the world are convinced that Mr. Trump’s America is in retreat while China’s moment is just beginning

The world thought it could change China, and in many ways it has. But China’s success has been so spectacular that it has just as often changed the world — and the American understanding of how the world works.

There is no simple explanation for how China’s leaders pulled this off. There was foresight and luck, skill and violent resolve, but perhaps most important was the fear — a sense of crisis among Mao’s successors that they never shook, and that intensified after the Tiananmen Square massacre and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But China had a strange advantage in battling bureaucratic resistance. The nation’s long economic boom followed one of the darkest chapters of its history, the Cultural Revolution, which decimated the party apparatus and left it in shambles. In effect, autocratic excess set the stage for Mao’s eventual successor, Deng Xiaoping, to lead the party in a radically more open direction.

In other words, he appears to have less use for the “opening up” part of Deng’s slogan.

Now Mr. Xi is steering the party toward repression again, tightening its grip on society, concentrating power in his own hands and setting himself up to rule for life by abolishing the presidential term limit. Will the party loosen up again, as it did a few years after Tiananmen, or is this a more permanent shift? If it is, what will it mean for the Chinese economic miracle?

The question now is whether it can sustain this model with the United States as an adversary rather than a partner.

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.

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.

“Ideological confrontation, geopolitical rivalry and bloc politics are not a choice for us,” Mr. Xi said in a speech at the opening of the forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

“What we stand against are unilateral sanctions, economic coercion and decoupling and supply chain disruption,” Mr. Xi said, clearly referring to efforts by the United States and its Western allies to pressure China.

The conference was virtually absent of European Union countries, largely because of the divisiveness of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, an authoritarian-leaning friend of Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, was the only European Union leader to attend.

Represented instead were nearly 150 developing nations. China has disbursed close to $1 trillion through the Belt and Road initiative, largely in loans, to build power plants, seaports, and other infrastructure across Asia, Africa and Latin America, but some countries are finding their debt obligations onerous.

“The forum has clearly shown that Russia remains a massive country with massive resources, and that they are very far from isolation,” said Artem Lukin, an international relations professor at Far Eastern Federal University, in Vladivostok, Russia. “Asia, and the Global South in general, are clearly showing that the war in Ukraine is not their concern, and that they are more interested in doing business with Russia.”

On Sunday, Mr. Wang told his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, that Israel’s retaliation in Gaza had “already gone beyond self-defense.” He also called on Israel to halt the “collective punishment of the people of Gaza.”

The pointed remarks signal a shift away from China’s stated policy of noninterference in another country’s internal affairs. China typically treads carefully when it comes to conflict in other countries, often opting for neutrality and anodyne statements about supporting peace.

They’re doing this as a way to signal to the Global South that China will support those countries in a way that they probably shouldn’t expect Western countries in general, and the U.S. in particular, to support them,” said Jonathan Fulton, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Chinese universities have organized classes to give students a “correct understanding” of the war, often highlighting Russia’s grievances with the West. Party newspapers have run series of commentaries blaming the United States for the conflict.

Mr. Xi has given that tale a more urgent, ominous spin. In doing so, he has embraced Mr. Putin as a fellow authoritarian lined up against Western dominance, demonstrating to the Chinese people that Mr. Xi has a partner in his cause.

“The most powerful weapon possessed by the West is, aside from nuclear weapons, the methods they use in ideological struggle,”

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, it says, “some countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Transcaucasia have become forward positions for the West to contain and meddle in Russia.”

It describes Mr. Putin as cleansing Russia of the political toxins that killed the Soviet Union.

In 2013, propaganda officials under Mr. Xi put out a documentary on the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This latest take offers an even more conspiratorial interpretation

They regard China and Russia as both menaced by “color revolution,” the party’s phrase for insurrections backed by Western governments

“They actually believe their own narrative about color revolutions and tend to see this whole situation as a U.S.-led color revolution to overthrow Putin,”

“Both domestically and internationally, Xi has been pedaling this dark narrative since he took power,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview. “It allows him to justify his accumulation of power and the changes he’s made by creating this sense of struggle and danger.”

The Biden administration has cast the war as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism. Chinese officials are mounting a counternarrative that American-led domineering is the source of conflict in Ukraine and elsewhere.

The documentary attributes the decline of the Soviet Union to political liberalization, especially what Beijing calls “historical nihilism,” or emphasizing the Communist Party’s mistakes and misdeeds. It accuses historians critical of the Soviet revolution of fabricating estimated death tolls by many millions for Stalin’s purges.

Stalin, it argues, was a modernizing leader whose purges went too far but initially “were something of a necessity” given the threats to Soviet rule. It suggests that rock music and modern fashion were symptoms of the moral rot that later set in.

“They’ve taken only one lesson from all of this, and that is you do not allow any freedom of expression,”

Previous leaders in Moscow — above all Mr. Gorbachev and Nikita S. Khrushchev — are portrayed as dupes, bewitched by the siren song of liberal reform and Western superiority.

Officials overseeing the screenings are often described in official notices as calling for cadres to maintain firm loyalty to Mr. Xi.

“Loving a party and its leader is not a cult of personality,”

Chinese leaders have been debating why the Soviet Union fell apart ever since it dissolved in 1991. More than his predecessors, Mr. Xi has blamed the Soviet Union’s breakup on lack of ideological spine and Western political subversion.

“If you have the worldview that you see in this documentary, you could tell yourself the story that the Russians are facing a real threat from the West,”

Political loyalty has become more crucial to Mr. Xi as Beijing tries to contain Covid outbreaks with stringent lockdowns, and manage a slowing economy. China’s foreign policy is under scrutiny, after some Chinese scholars posted essays criticizing Beijing’s refusal to condemn Mr. Putin.

Universities and colleges have organized indoctrination lectures for students, suggesting that officials are worried that young, educated Chinese may be receptive to the criticisms that Beijing has been too indulgent of Mr. Putin.

“There’s an ‘either we hang together or we hang separately’ attitude that comes into play,” Mr. Johnson, the former C.I.A. analyst, said of Chinese leaders. “If it’s a strong nationalist approach, then who in the party doesn’t want to be a good nationalist?”

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.

A huge number of top officials have been either arrested or placed under investigation.

Whenever a top official falls, people aren’t concerned about what he has done, but with those he might bring down with him.

In the past two years, President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption drive has burnished his reputation with the Chinese media

the anticorruption push is more of a Stalinist purge than a genuine attempt to clean up the government

Most telling of all, the purge has mainly targeted specific party factions, while those groups that support and pledge loyalty to Mr. Xi appear untouched.

High officials in China exercise unchecked power (until they don’t)

This privileged tribe enjoys almost unimaginable power

Mr. Xi’s most important supporters are the so-called second generation reds — descendants of senior Communist Party founders. (Mr. Xi himself is one of them.)

Recently the question was raised in a post on the Internet: Why have no “big tigers” been found in Fujian and Zhejiang? The message was almost immediately deleted.

This professor seemed to think that Mr. Xi might use his authority to guide China toward democracy. But this notion is wishful thinking. For a dictator, power is not a means to an end, power is the end.

Besides, anticorruption campaigns don’t guarantee real justice.

He is just another dictator

When the government media runs reports about cases that are still under investigation and gloats about how severely corrupt officials are being punished, it seems improbable that the accused will get a proper defense

They may well have committed crimes, but they have rights too, even if they have denied them to others.

Tencent's app, WeChat, is currently the largest and most commonly used messaging system in the world, with almost 1 billion users.

"He's regarded as being a sort of low-profile, not particularly interlinked or interconnected premier. He's got probably the worst job in China.

it's not a sort of political power. It's administrative power," he said.

"Power is about initiating, setting frameworks, setting the agenda. Well you can see people doing that, but Li Keqiang is more of an administrator."

The company's founder, Ma Huateng, is China's third richest man, according to Forbes, just behind Jack Ma and Dalian Wanda founder Wang Jianlin.

Ma, who is also known by his nickname "Pony," founded Tencent, the company which owns WeChat, in 1998 with his university classmates.

, Premier Li is number two in China's power structure, but his influence is far from assured.

It is those restrictions which make working in the world of China's internet so complex and potentially dangerous.

China's Great Firewall is rising higher than ever

"One challenge for tech titans like Ma in the coming years is whether they can keep on the good side of the authorities

Since then, Wang has grown to be a powerful, feared figure among Chinese officials.

Jack Ma is without a doubt one of China's most powerful people and possibly the country's most public face internationally next to President Xi.

As a result of Xi and Wang's crackdown, conspicuous spending and flaunting of wealth by officials has shrunk dramatically and as a result, Wang's political capital has continued to rise.

Wang's rise could be complicated by his age. He'll be 69 at the upcoming 19th Party Congress, meaning by custom he should retire.

he's the flamboyant and personable former English teacher who likes to dance to Michael Jackson tunes.

"He's been an essential lieutenant for Xi ... the president would be a weakened force without him at the top table," he said, placing Wang second

Ma, whose Chinese name is Ma Yun, is the executive chairman and founder of Alibaba,

Ma's peer on the China rich list, has had to abandon a series of major international deals after coming under scrutiny from Beijing.

Most people can't see the day after tomorrow."

China's president and, more importantly, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, analysts say Xi is already the country's most powerful leader since Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping

Xi's power is only set to grow.

far more than his predecessors,

most recently Chen Min'er who was promoted as party secretary of Chongqing.

Guo Wengui, the US-based businessman and perennial thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party.

and the chess game itself goes on inside a highly impenetrable black box," he said.