In his decade of ruling China, Xi Jinping has tried to imbue its people with confidence, telling them that the country is doing very well compared with the chaotic West.He has told the younger generation that China can finally look at the world as an equal. “It’s no longer as backward,” he said last year.“The East is rising, and the West is declining,” he declared, at a time when the United States and other Western countries seemed mired in high Covid infection rates, racial tensions and other problems.Mr. Xi has told China’s 1.4 billion people to be proud of its culture, its governance system and its future as a great power, all of which add up to his signature political philosophy, sometimes called the “confidence doctrine.”While much …
