China under Xi Jinping: Its Economic Challenges and Foreign Policy Initiatives

How will China develop under Xi Jinping’s rule? Is Xi Jinping, and by extension the Chinese state, now acting from a position of strength or weakness? In other words, do his policies appear to be the actions of a strong leader of an increasingly powerful nation? Or, are they the actions of an insecure one, uncertain of how legitimate the state is in the eyes of the population over which it rules? - Allen Carlson, Cornell University