Chinese President Xi Jinping Signals Continuity at Communist Party Congress

As the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party starts, the Xi Jinping regime finds itself on the ropes struggling to recover from self-inflicted blows instead of coasting triumphantly into the future. Its aggressive posture in world affairs and its relentlessly tight grip on domestic society have led to what it most fears—a return to the politics of containment. Countries—in Asia and globally—are now fully in doubt that China intends a peaceful rise to superpower status and are defending themselves by various economic, diplomatic, and military measures. After three decades of a restrained foreign policy that reassured the world about its benign intentions, China has overreached, and the costs are piling up both domestically and internationally.