Even as Xi Jinping strives to make China a superpower, his authoritarian urges have isolated it
an orderly affair. From October 16th the grandees of China’s Communist Party will gather in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for their five-yearly congress. Not a teacup will be out of place; not a whisper of protest will be audible. The Communist Party has always been obsessed with control. But under President Xi Jinping that obsession has deepened. After three decades of opening and reform under previous leaders, China has in many ways become more closed and autocratic under Mr Xi.
Some hope that, once the congress is over, a plan for relaxing the zero-covid policy may be unveiled. But there is no sign yet of the essential first steps to avoid mass deaths, such as many more vaccinations, especially of the old. Party propaganda suggests that any loosening is a long way off, regardless of the misery and economic mayhem that lockdowns cause.
This is why Western governments now treat Chinese innovation as a national-security issue. Many are boosting subsidies for industries such as chipmaking. President Joe Biden’s administration has gone much further, seeking openly to cripple the Chinese tech industry. On October 7th it It also suggests that Mr Biden overestimates the strengths of China’s top-down model and underestimates the democratic world’s more freewheeling one. Mr Xi’s obsession with control may make the Communist Party stronger, but it also makes China weaker than it would otherwise be. Throwing resources at national goals can work but is often inefficient: American firms produce roughly twice as much innovation for the same outlay as their Chinese peers, by some estimates.
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