The Big Picture

Vincent Boland: Tipping point in China in the struggle to control the creature it unleashed

Xi Jinping may exude confidence, but his actions suggest something less than that with the recent banking purge following a tech clampdown as the party-state attempts to exert its authority over all sectors

News coverage in Beijing of president Xi Jinping delivering a speech during the closing session of the National People’s Congress. Picture: Getty

Six years ago, as he consolidated his position at the top of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping told his fellow party-state officials that the moment had arrived for China “to take centre stage in the world”.

There were grounds to make such a statement. China had spent four decades turning itself into the world’s second superpower, exceeded only by the US. After it joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, its economy went ...