... Xi’s revolution is top-down: the last thing he wants is chaos on the streets.
What does he intend, then? As my Bloomberg colleague Malcolm Scott reports, the pilot project for the economic future Xi imagines is Zhejiang province, one of the wealthiest parts of China (incomes there are approaching levels in southern Europe) and a hotbed of private enterprise. Zhejiang is also Xi’s power base; he was party secretary there before ascending to higher office in Beijing.
The evidence from Zhejiang suggests that on economic matters Xi is not Mao, in the sense that he wants to redirect the energies of entrepreneurs, not eliminate them as a class. The emphasis is on state control.
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