Xi, India's Modi and Indonesia's Widodo lead pragmatists' rise
Kishore Mahbubani says China's Xi and the likely new leaders of India and Indonesia know that, to achieve rapid economic growth and modernisation, they will need to compromise
More than one-third of the world's population lives in just three countries: China, India and Indonesia. With all three undergoing significant political transitions, this is a decisive moment in shaping the global economy's future.
If Narendra Modi and Joko Widodo win the upcoming elections in India and Indonesia, respectively, they will join Chinese President Xi Jinping in spurring regional economic growth - likely causing Asia's rise to global economic pre-eminence to occur faster than the world ever imagined.
In the year since Xi assumed the Chinese presidency, he has centralised power to a remarkable degree. Not only has he positioned himself as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission, he has also neutralised potential rivals, including former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai and former security chief Zhou Yongkang .
Consolidating power in a country as large and messy as China is extremely difficult, making Xi's accomplishment remarkable, to say the least. But it is only a first step. Xi is now attempting to use this power to push through the difficult reforms that Hu Jintao and his prime minister, Wen Jiabao , have been widely criticised for neglecting.
Xi knows that he must be pragmatic in his reform efforts. First, he must build a national consensus capable of overcoming the powerful vested interests that oppose changes - including the dissolution of monopolies, improved market regulation, increased transparency and tax reform - that would level the country's economic playing field.
While Western leaders generally support Xi's market-oriented reform strategy, they remain puzzled by his devotion to the Communist Party. To the Western mind, any truly effective reformer must be a closet democrat, like the Soviet Union's last president, Mikhail Gorbachev.
But Xi has no intention of being the People's Republic's last president, and the Soviet Union's collapse in the wake of Gorbachev's political reforms taught him the importance of balancing change with stability. For Xi, the Communist Party's appeal lies not so much in its ideology as in its capacity to help bolster China's prosperity. Indeed, China's current leaders are modernising nationalists, not communists. They recognise that China's success over the last three decades is a direct result of its shift towards a more open economy and a freer society - a shift that will continue under Xi.
