Is China set to dominate the world?

Having secured a presidency for life within the country’s borders, Xi Jinping is now going for world domination – not out of megalomania, but a concern for survival. Simon Wilson reports.

Xi Jingping
There will be no more sissies under Xi
(Image credit: © Getty)

What’s happening?

It is to be Xi Jinping’s year of triumph. This autumn, the Chinese communist party holds its 20th Party Congress. In normal times, Xi would be expected to shuffle off into retirement, having put in a ten-year stint at the top. Instead, he is expected to secure an almost unprecedented third term. In 2017 the party formalised the recognition that Xi had become the most powerful leader since Mao by enshrining his name and ideology into its constitution. Then, in 2018, the presidential two-term limit was lifted, conceivably allowing Xi to remain president for life.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.