Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton looked at the growing power of Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.
“The China analysts … say that Xi Jinping now has more power than any Chinese leader since Mao Tse-tung are right,” Bolton said. “I think he’s undisputed in being at the top of the pyramid. It gives him fearsome control over China, both domestically and internationally.”
He added that the upside to Xi’s unitary power is that he might be able to move quickly on some issues favorable to the United States, notably the confrontation with North Korea concerning its nuclear missile program.
“I wish we were pressing the Chinese more on why it’s in their own interest to get rid of the Kim Jong-un regime,” Bolton said. “But it also means that if Xi Jinping decides to take a very hard line in the South China Sea, in the East China Sea, with India, in the trade area, and a whole range of other areas, I think he’s got the undisputed power to do that, too. The threat that China poses, I think, on balance, is enhanced by this centralization of power, which we haven’t seen in 50 years, basically.”
Bolton said Xi has been able to “harness a lot of credit for the economic growth” in China, even though current growth is arguably more attributable to market reforms implemented by his predecessor Deng Xiaoping.
“What you’ve got is a very mercantilist policy, where the Communist Party dominates basically all the key economic decisions. A lot of the Chinese economic growth is overstated,” he added.
“I don’t think it’s that that gives him the leverage. I think he’s a very crafty politician, and for years, in his first and second terms, he was engaged in what the West and the Western press called an ‘anti-corruption campaign,’” he recalled. READ MORE
