This is an interesting time for Xi. I don’t know of any good betting markets here but Xi may be in more danger than he has been for years, and may be re-elected with constraints like a promise to make it his last term or not re-elected at all.
Pekinology is hard, but in addition to the still-escalating coronavirus failure, there is a Russian report that Xi was considering invading Taiwan before the re-election as a quick victorious war of revanchism against a much smaller isolated decadently-demoralized enemy (ie. just like Putin & Ukraine), which given the risk of failure implies either that Xi is higher than a kite on his own propaganda supply & totalitarian epistemic closure or that he is much less secure than one would think. There is further a report from Nikkei that the Politburo itself (the only group that could reasonably force Xi to step down or otherwise rein him in) is deeply unhappy with Xi and particularly outraged at his encouragement (the ‘coincidental’ timing of Putin delaying the invasion to right after Xi’s Olympics has been lost on no one, never mind the subsequent water-carrying) of the boondoggle of Ukraine.
This is an interesting time for Xi. I don’t know of any good betting markets here but Xi may be in more danger than he has been for years, and may be re-elected with constraints like a promise to make it his last term or not re-elected at all.
Pekinology is hard, but in addition to the still-escalating coronavirus failure, there is a Russian report that Xi was considering invading Taiwan before the re-election as a quick victorious war of revanchism against a much smaller isolated decadently-demoralized enemy (ie. just like Putin & Ukraine), which given the risk of failure implies either that Xi is higher than a kite on his own propaganda supply & totalitarian epistemic closure or that he is much less secure than one would think. There is further a report from Nikkei that the Politburo itself (the only group that could reasonably force Xi to step down or otherwise rein him in) is deeply unhappy with Xi and particularly outraged at his encouragement (the ‘coincidental’ timing of Putin delaying the invasion to right after Xi’s Olympics has been lost on no one, never mind the subsequent water-carrying) of the boondoggle of Ukraine.