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James Stent's avatar

Excellent review. I liked the question you posed in the first paragraph. I believe that the answer is that, given the background, makeup and experience of Xi, an alternative trajectory for China under his leadership would have been extremely unlikely. But the question remains, if another leader had been chosen, could the Party have distanced itself from Marxism-Leninism and set China on a different trajectory? We will never know, but I think that it might have, although the chances of that were limited by the events of 1989.

Rudd's analysis of Xi as a Marxist Leninist Nationalist is important. It should be complemented by further exploration of how much of Xi's thinking and decisions are firmly in the tradition of traditional Chinese autocratic political leadership.

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Jaishankar Gopalakrishnan's avatar

Your review beautifully summarised the author’s observations and analysis. Thank you

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