The myth of the master strategist – Part 2: Xi Jinping and getting China wrong

Following on from the September edition of The Looking Glass, which took a critical look at the mythos that has built up around Vladimir Putin as a master strategist, this issue focuses to the conventional wisdom that Xi Jinping's China constitutes a cunning and ideologically driven foe with a well-developed strategy to overturn Western dominance.

There are at least three problems with such thinking: 1. It exaggerates the role of ideology as a singular (or even primary) causal explanation for Chinese behaviour under Xi Jinping. 2. It understates how China's foreign policy and 'grand strategy' have been just as contingent as other states on international and domestic politics. 3. Claims of Chinese strategic coherence minimise the effect of the major pathologies in China's domestic policymaking process.

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