The mainstream of China watchers are finally beginning to face up to the fact that President Xi Jinping is determined to impose a very different political and economic model on his country than what many in the West had hoped for. In this very fine piece for China File, Thomas Kellogg of the Open Air Foundations (Soros money) reviews a new book by David Shambaugh called China’s Future. The peg for the article is that China has enacted a law that requires every foreign non-governmental organization to register with the Chinese police, which everyone suspects is going to result in the wholesale closure of efforts on the ground to promote anything the West regards as pluralism. China is in for a long period of rigid centralization of power and that is most likely to block economic or political change, as a reunion of China Hands concluded almost two years ago. That work, Has The American Media Misjudged China, can be seen here. Unfortunately, we were way ahead of the curve.
