China’s paramount chief, Xi Jinping, comprises multitudes. His financial philosophy touts each self-reliance and openness. His imaginative and prescient of policymaking embraces top-down design, but in addition bottom-up experimentation. In the course of the covid-19 pandemic, he urged native officers to remove infections (which frequently required lockdowns) and promote development (which required mobility). His current name to domesticate “new productive forces” entails championing cutting-edge applied sciences, however with out neglecting conventional industries. Communists are taught to consider within the energy of contradictory forces, as Trivium, a consultancy, as soon as put it. So Mr Xi “will anticipate his comrades to manage”.