Xi Jinping's third term is a tragic error

The advantage of democracies is not that they necessarily choose wise and well-intentioned leaders. Too often they choose the opposite. But these can be opposed without danger and dismissed without bloodshed. Xi's next 10 years to be worse than the last In personal despotisms, neither is possible. In institutionalised despotisms, dismissal is conceivable, as Khrushchev discovered. But it is dangerous and the more dominant the leader, the more dangerous it becomes. It is simply realistic to expect the next 10 years of Xi to be worse than the last. How bad then was his first decade? In a recent article…