NO. 3 | THE CHAIRMAN XI JINPING

SOMETIMES THINGS JUST SEEM TO GO your way. In 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping strengthened his hold over the world’s most populous nation, was inducted into the pantheon of party leaders beside Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and—small detail—announced that China henceforth intends to lead the world. He mentioned this deep into an Oct. 18 speech that ran beyond three hours, which begins to account for why so audacious a declaration drew relatively little notice. But then it also came after the President of the United States had signaled time and again over the previous 10 months that America might be surrendering the top spot. Drama requires conflict. This felt more like process. Donald Trump posted an unexpected vacancy, and China readied its application for the slot.

But fortune, as Louis Pasteur noted, favors the prepared mind. China’s leaders spent decades priming the country—historically viewed by the outside world as so insular that its national icon is a wall—to stake a claim for how it has always seen itself: the Middle Kingdom, at the center of the world. And it was no coincidence that its new ambition was announced by a leader so firmly in control that the party congress authorizing what should be his final term declined to designate a successor.

This year, Xi cemented his place as the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng, the visionary who turned China toward a market economy