Remarks
Xi’s Legacy May Rest on the World’s Biggest Infrastructure Project
China’s ambitious One Belt One Road initiative will leave a big mark one way or another.
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During Xi Jinping’s first five years in office, it’s become a journalistic commonplace to describe him as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.
The signs and trappings of his immense clout are indeed apparent almost everywhere one looks in China. He’s mounted a sweeping but opaque crackdown on corruption, whose rich and powerful targets lend the campaign the appearance of a vendetta against potential sources of resistance within the system, real or imagined. He’s almost completely usurped the role of Li Keqiang, his prime minister, a post whose historical function has been to run the economy.