‘Unlimited power in the hands of limited people,’ wrote Alexander Solzhenitsyn, ‘always leads to cruelty. It is not that evil people seize power, but that the system selects for mediocrity and loyalty. The result is a government that cannot correct itself, cannot hear its citizens and cannot change course without collapse.’

These words describe Communist China today.

In 2012, concerned with the growing prosperity and independence of the middle class, party elders turned to Xi Jinping to re-assert authority.

Xi wasted no time. Fabricating corruption allegations, he waged a campaign against potential rivals and their supporters. Over two million officials and business leaders were purged. And the purges continue. Xi is the chairman of everything.

Having silenced critics at home, this avuncular, but ruthless politician, set about fulfilling Beijing’s ambitions of hegemony, abroad.

Xi’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative financially colonised much of the South Pacific, Central Asia, Africa and, Central and Eastern Europe. He used China’s heavy investments in ports and other infrastructure to influence votes at the United Nations. Even Beijing’s appalling human rights record didn’t prevent it being elected to the UN Human Rights Council, six times. And while contributing just eight per cent of the UN’s overall budget, China has its officials running four of the UN’s 15 specialised agencies. Washington, which financially contributes three times more than China and more than 185 member states combined, leads just one.

President Xi projects himself as a virtuous global citizen, claiming China would be guided in its efforts to facilitate the Paris climate accord through, ‘a future of win-win cooperation’. His idea of win-win is for China to ignore its own emissions targets and build around two coal-fired power stations a week, representing 95 per cent of global construction.

But then, as a Leninist, President Xi believes, ‘There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience.’

This mindset has seen China repeatedly breach its World Trade Organisation (WTO) obligations. Hidden subsidies, slave labour, theft of intellectual property and market access restrictions all contravene the Protocols of Accession.

In his mission to weaken the West, Xi also observes another Leninist dictum that, ‘We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.’

To do this Chinese cadres have been deployed in Western countries where, to help foment social division, they have successfully infiltrated universities, the media and the political class. Gormless Western governments, afraid of incurring Beijing’s wrath, watch on submissively. As one Chinese ambassador succinctly put it, ‘We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns.’

Australia knows this well.

In calling for an inquiry into the origins of Covid, Beijing singled us out for economic punishment, proclaiming the federal government cannot profit from China while ‘smearing’ it. Tariffs and other trade sanctions were imposed on Australian barley, beef, cotton, lamb, lobsters, timber and wine. Canberra complained to the WTO to no avail.

Given Beijing’s utter contempt for fair trade, its formal protest to the WTO over President Trump’s imposition of 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports is truly breathtaking. Likewise the irony of a China Daily opinion piece which asserted, ‘What is unfolding in the United States today is the sad story that the country has become increasingly authoritarian, and more and more like a centrally planned economy. Private enterprises are now at the behest of the all-powerful president.’

Don’t expect the Western media to call humbug. They would rather side with Beijing than the US President. After all, they happily backed President Xi on Covid, and refrain from criticising China’s 30-per-cent contribution to global CO2 emissions which have surged 90 per cent since 2015. Also best to follow former president Joe Biden’s lead that China’s human rights abuses are a matter of ‘cultural differences’.

But despite all the bluster, President Xi faces an existential crisis, a condition President Trump seeks to exploit through his punitive tariffs.

First, the legacy of the one-child experiment is biting. China’s population is declining and, despite the latest three-child policy, the fertility rate is lower than Japan’s. In coming decades, over 100 million workers will retire. Who will replace them?

Then there’s the continuing fallout from China’s property meltdown. State-backed real estate companies contributed to a property bubble which built some 50 million empty dwellings. Real estate and property development once accounted for 31 per cent of China’s economy. Now, a potentially lethal $12.5 trillion of debt is held by banks and local government financing vehicles, secured by properties which are declining in value. At 360 per cent of GDP, China’s debt load has reached crisis proportions.

Loyalty politics has also seen massive over-investment in vanity projects like under-utilised air and sea ports, empty expressways, and bridges to nowhere.

The cement and steel industries, once beneficiaries, are now saddled with significant excess capacity and squeezed margins. Even before Trump’s tariffs, factory closures were on the rise. Now, with youth unemployment approaching 17 per cent, Chinese manufacturers are facing last-minute cancellations from American importers, with no compensation.

Most worrying, China is no longer considered a commercial world-beater. For secure supply chains, Western businesses are turning increasingly to other jurisdictions.

Last year these developments saw Chinese workers defying authorities by staging unprecedented public protests and violent ‘revenge against society’ crimes. They cited unpaid wages, low-paying jobs, high personal debt and property disputes.

Clearly we are witnessing the fatal conceit of central planning unravelling, reminiscent of the Soviet Union before its ultimate collapse. As Solzhenitsyn observed, the party ‘cannot change course without collapse’.

So after decades of Western governments tolerating Beijing’s rogue behaviour in the naive belief that commercial bridges and a more prosperous China would lead to greater geopolitical cooperation, President Trump has realised the opposite is true and is calling Xi out.

It is truly a global reset and, while China still has hands to play, America holds the Trump card.