Xi Jinping expects to be in command of the party and the country till 2035, -- 13 years from now

Certainly, some critique put him on a par with Deng Xiaoping or even Mao Zedong.

Some years ago, Xi Jinping had made a classic statement - "One must build a good cage. If the cage is too loose, or is very good but the door is not closed, and one is free to go in and out, then that is of no use".

Now the Communists party in China moves on to a new “central task”: to achieve the “second centenary goal of building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and to advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization.” 

As the name suggests, this goal is tied to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China – which would be 2049 – but Xi has pushed the date for “basically” realizing this goal forward to 2035. Conveniently, that leaves the door open for Xi to still be in command of the party at the big celebration 13 years from now.  

Marxists in once upon a time Red forte Tripura - used to often say the line from a play. The line of the play was of course penned obviously with a pro-Left liberal sentiment:

"Every war or struggle is for power; and the power can never do good to anybody".

The economic policy that Xi has put forward contains a similar sort of contradiction. The central idea of the “dual circulation” policy is that China should increase its trade surplus with the wider world, while simultaneously becoming more dependent on its domestic economy to drive consumption. Many economists think that this will be a hard balance to manage. 

But, in a sense, the strategy should not be seen as an exercise in economics but in politics. It mirrors precisely the idea of being highly connected to the world while closed to it physically.  

A “Sinosphere” in which China itself remains harder to access for outsiders, even while it engages with the outside world on its own terms, is a real possibility. 

Yet compared with real openness, it is one that would leave both sides poorer. 

China remains connected to the outside world largely through the virtual environment, in particular social media and video apps. Yet the vision of the world created within the country is very partial. State media pumps out images of the west still devastated by the virus.