Xi Jinping offers the world a seductive promise: a “community with a shared future for mankind.” Its intellectual ancestry is rooted in tianxia—a sinocentric ordering that encompasses “all under heaven.”
This is the vision Beijing presents as harmony without hegemony, and for many years, both Canada and the U.S. swallowed this line, and the accompanying promise that China would liberalize and democratize its governance model—a misguided proposition which James Mann correctly labeled the “China Fantasy,” but which most bought into because it promised profits, at least in the short term.
