Rudd Foresees a ‘Centrist’ China, but Chinese Dissident Says This Is Unrealistic

In his new book, “On Xi Jinping,” former Australian Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd posits that the world needs merely to wait out Xi’s leadership, at which time China will resume a more centrist course. The current ambassador to the United States claims this swing could happen as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader’s strict adherence to Marxist ideology takes its toll on the economy. Xi’s objective is to “change the international order itself, underpinned by an increasingly powerful China as the emerging geopolitical and geo-economic fulcrum of that order,” Rudd argues. He says the 71-year-old communist leader has shifted Beijing’s politics to the “Leninist left” by reasserting the leader’s power while shifting economic policy to the “Marxist left” by prioritising state planning over market forces....