China First

China takes the lead in a growing number of emergent sectors like renewable energy and electric mobility. The Silk Road project gives it control over important trade routes. China asserts itself increasingly in foreign politics; in Asia this also takes the form of military dominance. New strong man Xi Jinping has secured a network of power that reaches further than Mao once did. He is fine-tuning the surveillance state with digital facial recognition and an Orwellian ‘social credit system’. Here, too, China plays a pioneering role that may well be uncomfortable to the West. The Chinese century has begun. It now matters urgently that we understand it and assert ourselves.