Chinese president Xi Jinping
Photographer: Feng Li/Getty Images
Xi’s G-20 Dilemma: How to Win Over Trump Without Changing China
China’s most powerful leader in decades is facing what may be his greatest challenge yet.
When Xi Jinping hosted Joe Biden for a visit back in 2011, China’s then-vice president had the Arab Spring on his mind. The regimes then tumbling across the Middle East, Xi told Biden, had lost touch with their citizens, becoming isolated and self-satisfied—a fate the Communist Party needed to avoid at all costs, a former senior U.S. official recalled.
Two million people on the streets of semi-autonomous Hong Kong may not constitute an Arab Spring-style threat to China, which censored reports of the recent protests over a planned extradition law. But as he prepares to meet with President Donald Trump at the Group of 20 summit in Japan this week, Xi still faces a watershed moment in his seven years running China.