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Chinese leader set to visit U.S.

By Stuart Leavenworth
McClatchy Washington Bureau

BEIJING Hes been

called Chinas most all-controlling leader since Chairman
Mao, and he is arguably the
worlds most powerful head of
state. Yet as Xi Jinping prepares
to travel to the United States for
a highly choreographed visit,
his vulnerabilities and those
of the country he leads are
coming to the fore.
In just the
past
three
months, Chinas stock market
has
tanked, and
concerns over
the slowing
Chinese econXi
omy
have
rocked global markets. Industrial accidents have killed
scores of Chinese citizens, including 165 who died in last
months explosion in Tianjin.
Both the stock market crash
and the Tianjin tragedy have
shaken the faith of Chinese
people in their government.
Meanwhile,
Xi
has
launched two separate crackdowns against corrupt officials and liberal dissenters
that have made him few
friends in the state bureaucracy and among Chinas
educated elite.
Xi Jinping is feared more
than loved, said Willy WoLap Lam, a Hong Kong-based
history professor and author
of the 2015 book Chinese
Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping.
The Chinese leader, he
said, has struck the pose of a
tough guy in foreign affairs;
sidelined his rivals and peppered his speeches with rhetoric about fulfilling the Chinese dream.
But in terms of real policies to improve the economy,
to reduce the gap between
rich and poor, he hasnt done
much, said Lam, an adjunct
professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Xi pronounced shee
is slated to make his first
U.S. state visit as Chinese
president this week, meeting
with President Barack Oba-

ma on Friday and then addressing the U.N. General

Assembly on Sept. 28. Before
traveling to Washington, Xi
will meet Wednesday with
tech and aviation leaders in
Seattle and Washington state,
which exports more goods to
China, in terms of dollar
value, than any other.
When Xi last visited the United States, in June 2013, he held
informal talks with Obama at
the Annenberg retreat in California. Back then, Xi was a
largely unknown quantity.
Some analysts hoped he might
turn out to be a political reformer; others dismissed him as a
featherweight. Neither has
proved to be true.
In less than three years, Xi
has consolidated more power
than any Chinese leader
since Mao. Hes installed
himself on the partys most
important commissions, and
his corruption crackdown
has proven to be a two-fer in
further solidifying his position. It has boosted his popularity with the Chinese public while also eliminating potential rivals, such as Zhou
Yongkang, Chinas former
domestic security chief, who
lorded over the nations oil industry and other state-owned
businesses.
At the same time, Xi has attempted to transition Chinas
economy to a new model
away from reliance on heavy
industry and exports to more
high-tech manufacturing and
service industries. Its been a
fitful transition and could be
contributing to Chinas unexpected slowdown. But many
economists say China needs
to eventually make this shift,
and they applaud Xi for attempting it.
In the United States, public
opinion has soured against
China. In 2011, before Xi took
the helm of the Chinese Communist Party, 51 percent of
those surveyed in the United
States had favorable attitudes
toward China. By this year,
those numbers had dropped
to 38 percent, according to a
survey released this month
by the Pew Research Center.
Despite such findings or

possibly because of them

Xi likes to present himself as
a friend of the American people. When he was vice president in 2012, he visited the Iowa family who had hosted
him in 1985 during a cultural

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exchange. During the past

week, Chinas state-run Xinhua news service has been
highlighting Xis friends in
the U.S., with videos flashing back to Xis seven visits to
the United States.

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A6 Centre Daily Times, Sunday, September 20, 2015