Does China’s President Xi Jinping Have a “Mandate from Heaven?”
Oh, how things have changed in China. The rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) the past one hundred years has been brutal, offensive, uplifting, inspiring and as oppressive as it has been impressive at times. The CCP’s powerful Central Committee has passed a resolution that is expected to enhance President Xi Jinping’s grip on power as the 21st century unfolds. The resolution calls Xi’s ideology is “the epitome of the Chinese culture and soul.”
I have been an observer and at times a small participant in the changes in China having a lifelong interest in all things China and have traveled extensively across the country for the past 30 plus years.
Forty five years ago, Deng Xiaoping introduced major economic reforms–lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and leading to it becoming the second-largest economy in the world, a superpower and has both economic and military muscle to flex on the global stage.