Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream

This week's Economist magazine has a few interesting articles on Xi Jinping's "Chinese Dream".

Every Chinese leader has his own slogan. For Deng Xiaoping, it was "reform and opening up". Jiang Zemin had his "three represents" and for Hu Jintao it was "scientific-development outlook".

The vision thing is important in China. Thus, China's new President Xi Jinping has adopted "the Chinese dream" as his call to action for China.

Xi first mention of this was his dream of "the great revival of the Chinese nation".

It sounds nice of course. But, as the Economist argues, there are at least two risks.

First, there is nationalism, which can fuel China's bellicose behaviour with its neighbors and also the US. The other risk is that the Chinese dream ends up handing more power to the Communist Party than to the people. Xi's main focus seems to be on strengthening the Party's absolute claim on power. But corruption and official excess will be curbed only when the constitution becomes more powerful than the Party.