New China facing first major test of credentials

How he navigates this predicament will have ramifications beyond China’s national boundaries for many years and in the many areas China is integrated into the modern civilised world.

He has the opportunity to emerge from this crisis a greater and more powerful player on the world stage, but, if he misjudges it, he will join Vladimir Putin as a derided thuggish pariah, and rightly so. This seeming problem could swiftly be turned into a triumph. We will soon see if Xi is sophisticated enough to play on the world stage and use events to his advantage, or whether he is just another leaden-handed communist strongman who lacks the finesse necessary to operate in a highly complicated, interdependent world.

The knee-jerk reaction was to send in the police and use tear gas – the stock-in-trade reaction of this totalitarian state. Interestingly, he has pulled back from continuation of this, which would have inevitably led to injuries and possibly death, which would have created an early martyr.

Quite what Xi is thinking is difficult to speculate at this early stage. He has, seemingly, made inroads against corruption and is suggesting an open approach to governance. Whether he can keep his nerve and navigate this with the light touch and assurance of the leader of a nation fit to be part of the civilised world, or he simply defaults to what history tells us will be unsophisticated bloody violence, only time will tell. The latter outcome will cast a dark pall over this area and draw Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea – and how it will choose prosecute them once its aircraft carrier is fully operational – into sharp focus.

John Patterson