How China Misperceives Itself

In 2017, Xi Jinping stated that China's main contradiction was no longer between growth and scarcity, but between "unbalanced and insufficient development and people's ever-increasing needs for a better life." It seems like a profound diagnosis, doesn't it? But here comes the short circuit: China is very good at listing its problems, but not at recognizing their true cause. There is a subtle but lethal difference between naming a difficulty and accepting that the system itself is responsible for it. The argument is this: China's weakness is not its inability to see its problems, but the temptation to always describe them as "technical incidents" or temporary annoyances. Thus, what should be treated as a structural defect — for example, the concentration of power around Xi, the ideological rigidity, or the tension between central directives and local application — is instead described as if it were the fault of circumstances or some bad apple. This makes it possible to avoid real reforms and limits the range of possible solutions. The undisputed protagonist is Xi Jinping, but he is not alone. In official documents, speeches, and even five-year plans, Chinese leaders are increasingly explicit in naming vulnerabilities that they would once have swept under the rug. Since 2016, Xi has been repeating that "key and basic technologies are controlled by others" and identifies advanced semiconductors and lithography machines as China's real Achilles' heels. All around him, Chinese academics and think tanks echo this: dependence on foreign components is a real limitation. But when we move from words to deeds, the narrative changes. Take the collapse of the real estate sector or the aging of the population: in the official plans, they are called "risks to be managed," never "consequences of a distorted system." The solutions are palliative — lowering down payments for home purchases, increasing child benefits, some consumption incentives — but never a real shake-up of the development model. And there is one detail that explains everything: when something goes wrong, the blame often falls on individual "incompetent" or "corrupt" officials. The message is: the system is sound; it's only certain individuals who make mistakes. It's as if, in a soccer team that always loses, it were said that it's only the fault of the last defender, never the coach or the game plan. History teaches us that great empires often see difficulties coming, but they interpret them through the wrong lens. The British Empire in the 19th century and Brezhnev's Soviet Union made the same mistake: they diagnosed the problems as "lack of capacity" or "execution errors," never as systemic limitations. Meanwhile, countries like Japan during the Meiji Restoration managed to change course only after profound political shocks — a rare thing, almost never seen in the great powers. If you're wondering why China isn't carrying out structural reforms, the answer isn't that it doesn't see the problems. It sees them, and how, but it interprets them in a way that keeps the power structure intact. And pay attention to a detail that often escapes notice: when China used tariffs and export controls to put pressure on the United States in 2025, its external confidence grew, but its internal rhetoric remained cautious. Rather than triumphalism, there is talk of resilience and control. The perspective that is often missing in the West is this: even if Chinese leaders openly declare the challenges, the real game is played out in how they frame them. If they call them "technical problems," they can only act on the surface — and those on the outside risk misdiagnosing China's future moves. Paradoxically, the real risk for China is not a sudden collapse, but a slow and almost invisible erosion, similar to that experienced by the British Empire and the Soviet Union. Sometimes the building doesn't have to fall down all at once: it's enough that the roof is never really repaired. The phrase to remember: China is not blind to its weaknesses — it looks at them, but it sees them in the distorting mirror of political expediency. If this perspective has made you look at China differently, you can mark I'm In on Lara Notes: it's the gesture that says this idea now belongs to you. And if tomorrow at dinner you tell someone why China prefers to fix the symptoms instead of changing the structure, on Lara Notes you can tag it with Shared Offline — so the conversation stays alive. This Note comes from Foreign Affairs and saved you 6 minutes of reading.