 "Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Photo: Reuters.")
In 1793, in his letter to Britain’s King George III, China’s Qianlong emperor rejected all the British requests to improve the state of trade between England and China. After all, the Middle Kingdom “possesses all things in prolific abundance … there is no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians”. Half a century later, China was defeated by Britain in the Opium Wars, and started to rethink its place in the world. Ever since, Chinese elites have been searching for answers to the same question: how to make China great again?
The Communist party in
