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The year 2024 has been disastrous for Chinese President Xi Jinping. For all his rhetoric about the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” his regime has faced staggering setbacks. Military purges aimed at rooting out corruption have, instead, exposed a systemic malaise that continues to undermine preparedness. The economic expansion collapsed as unemployment, bankruptcies and capital outflows soared. Meanwhile, its key partners, Moscow and Damascus, have stumbled or fallen, undermining Beijing’s geostrategic ambitions. Taken together, these and other crises have revealed a China that seems fragile, not formidable.

If the year 2024 shatters the illusions of China’s unwavering rise, the year 2025 will expose the vulnerabilities that Xi can no longer hide.

The year 2024 has been disastrous for Chinese President Xi Jinping. For all his rhetoric about the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” his regime has faced staggering setbacks. Military purges aimed at rooting out corruption have, instead, exposed a systemic malaise that continues to undermine preparedness. The economic expansion collapsed as unemployment, bankruptcies and capital outflows soared. Meanwhile, its key partners, Moscow and Damascus, have stumbled or fallen, undermining Beijing’s geostrategic ambitions. Taken together, these and other crises have revealed a China that seems fragile, not formidable.

If the year 2024 shatters illusions of China’s unwavering rise, the year 2025 will lay bare vulnerabilities that Xi can no longer hide.

In the face of growing internal disorder and an soon ambitious US president, Donald Trump, in Washington, Xi is not betting on radical changes or ambitious reforms. Instead, it pursues a policy of perseverance: muddling through economic stagnation, avoiding open confrontation with Washington, redoubling ideological discipline, and fomenting chaos to distract its adversaries and buy time to stabilize its precarious position.

However, Xi’s technique carries significant risks. Although his willingness to endure hardship would likely prevent him from controlling the force today, it threatens to undermine his aspirations for a Chinese national renaissance tomorrow.

Contrary to Xi’s carefully constructed image of competence, China’s domestic dilemmas remain profound. A shrinking population, a weakening currency, and dwindling foreign investment have exposed cracks in Xi’s economic stewardship. They also undermine the Communist Party’s bargain with the Chinese people: prosperity in exchange for compliance. China’s crisis of confidence risks spiraling into a vicious cycle as weak growth deters investment, shrinks spending, deepens deflation, and raises unemployment—all of which drag growth even lower. Xi’s reliance on meager supply-side stimulus has delivered fleeting sugar highs, with modest spending upticks and short-lived credit expansions. But ballooning debt, bad real estate bets, and a stock market that has been flat for a decade leave Xi with few levers to reignite growth.

Worse, Xi’s crusade toward perceived weaknesses within the party, the military, and the personal sector has deepened his dilemma. The purges of senior officials such as People’s Liberation Army Navy Admiral Miao Hua – a prominent advocate of Xi’s ideological conformity accused of “serious violations on the ground” – as well as former Defense Minister Li Shangfu highlight the rottenness in the ranks. The alleged arrest of more than 80 company executives in 2024 alone has stifled innovation and fueled fears of arbitrary state intervention. While such moves can consolidate loyalty and impose control, they also deepen mistrust and erode the competition Xi desires to cope with developing pressures.

These widening woes have only steeled Xi’s resolve. He routinely invokes Western “encirclement” and “containment,” blaming the United States for thwarting China’s rise. But he uses this narrative to justify ever-expanding repression at home, including constructing more than 200 party-run, extrajudicial detention facilities to enforce discipline and root out dissent. In Xi’s view, China’s domestic struggles ultimately stem from weak ideological discipline and insufficient loyalty to his vision. Put differently, in Xi’s mind, China isn’t broken; it’s disobedient. His solution? A stronger dose of the same medicine: tighter party control, intensified repression, and an unrelenting drive to cement his legacy as the architect of China’s historical destiny.

Amid internal challenges, Xi is turning to chaos abroad to reshape the international order in China’s favor. By offering diplomatic cover and economic support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and tacit backing for Middle Eastern disruptors such as Iran, Xi is fueling crises that distract, divide, and drain Western resources. For Xi, chaos is not merely a tactic; it’s a form of strategic currency, undermining Western cohesion while bolstering his narrative of Chinese resilience and strength. His calculation is stark: If China’s ascent is faltering, the international architecture sustaining its rivals must falter, too. Seen in this light, disorder abroad is Xi’s lifeline—a calculated gambit to obscure his inability to deliver progress at home or globally.

However, 2025 will test Xi like never before. Intensified surveillance by Washington – adding new semiconductor research, exports of complex technologies and higher price lists – will meet growing domestic unrest, adding employee movements and online dissent. At the same time, the emergence of an anti-authoritarian alignment – ​​marked by strengthened transatlantic coordination in relation to China and the new trilateral framework between the United States, Japan and South Korea – will accentuate tension. These converging forces will challenge Xi with tactics he cannot or will not predict, exposing the fragility of his centralized strength and testing the limits of his carefully constructed narrative of inevitability.

Xi’s biggest X-factor will be Trump, whose go back promises unpredictability. During his first term, Trump waited 15 months to impose price lists on Chinese goods. This time, price lists be implemented without delay and intensely, targeting the lifeblood of China’s faltering economy: exports. These rates will not only arrive faster; they will cut spending further, with proposed rates of up to 60% on critical sectors such as technology, client goods and commercial equipment. Unlike sanctions, which Xi has worked to ease and took years to completely realize, the price lists take effect overnight, giving Beijing little time to respond and forcing brands Chinese to soak up crushing losses.

Trump’s tariff threats translate into enormous danger for Xi. China’s dependence on the United States (its largest trading partner) is maintaining millions of manufacturing jobs, but an immediate escalation of price lists could devastate small and medium-sized enterprises, causing factories to close. and layoffs. Vulnerable sectors such as electronics and textiles may face severe disruptions, and even the electric vehicle industry (one of China’s few bright spots) is grappling with internal oversaturation and nascent Western industry. Meanwhile, Washington’s bipartisanship to rein in foreign investment threatens to stifle critical U. S. capital flows, restricting Beijing’s technological ambitions and broader economic goals.

Taken together, those measures could deal a fatal blow to the Chinese economy, whose expansion is almost below Beijing’s official target of 5%. Tellingly, the party threatened to fire economists if they warned of a weak economy or expressed “inappropriate” perspectives, a hallmark of authoritarianism aimed at suppressing inconvenient truths. Xi has made increasing domestic consumption his most sensible priority for 2025, but that too rests on shaky foundations. If Xi has even less confidence in the markets, it is in the Chinese masses, who have shown no desire to get out of their economic quagmire through money. Investors share this skepticism: China’s 10-year bond yield has plummeted to record lows, signaling doubts about the country’s trajectory.

Meanwhile, Xi’s reliance on global chaos for his position shows a glaring paradox: the instability he fuels to distract the West can backfire if those crises stabilize. In 2025, the end of major conflicts – whether through Trump’s promised deal with Ukraine or Israeli action against Iran’s remaining proxies – could put the spotlight back on China. For Xi, this is a nightmare scenario. The West’s fragmented orientation has helped mask its vulnerabilities, but resolving those crises can allow the West to confront them head-on.

Xi’s choice is stark: retreat with a survival strategy or threaten further instability by going too far. Both paths will test the ability to stay in the long term. Given Trump’s competitive stance, Xi is unlikely to start an open economic war, at least initially, as he recognizes that an escalation would hurt China more than its adversaries. Instead, Xi could simply adopt symbolic and calibrated responses – such as the recently announced restrictions on rare lands – to allocate strength while preserving room for negotiation. Xi can also leverage retaliatory price lists or crackdown on U. S. corporations operating in China to sign a challenge without provoking a full-scale confrontation.

At the domestic level, Xi’s task is how to redefine success. If political stability and ideological terrain now take precedence over economic growth, Xi will have to regard the difficulties as positive evidence of China’s resilience and ethical superiority over the West. Now decades longer than expected, Xi will most likely provide those delays as mandatory steps to know the “Chinese dream”. It remains an open question whether the other Chinese will accept this new narrative or whether they will tire of a delayed schedule. future.

On the global stage, Xi’s reliance on instability carries its own dangers. Instead of treading water, Xi could simply escalate tensions elsewhere, perhaps in the South China Sea, testing the United States with a confrontation with the Philippines. However, while a chaos-focused strategy aims to distract adversaries and avoid direct confrontation, it invites miscalculations. Specifically, Xi risks exposing Beijing to vulnerabilities that have weakened other authoritarian regimes, from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s disastrous bid to invade Ukraine to Hamas’ ill-fated attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, a series that unleashed great reprisals.

Of course, the irony of Xi’s leadership is that a likely transformative figure, obsessed with progress, cannot settle for change. Under his rule, China has become a disruptive and restrained power, where any effort to harden threatens to tarnish Beijing’s global status. and undermining the credibility of its rise as a marvelous power. But getting ahead is not leading, and for someone whose legitimacy rests on national prestige, mere survival would likely fall dangerously short of their goals. Ultimately, whether 2025 becomes a turning point or just another terrible, horrible, bad year will depend on Xi’s ability to triumph over the greatest challenge of all: himself.

Craig Singleton is a senior China researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former US diplomat. X: @CraigMSingleton

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