Xi’s own place in history may be on the line, too. Later this year, the 20th Party Congress will convene in Beijing. The major item on the agenda is hardly a secret: Xi’s appointment to an unprecedented third five-year term as the Party’s General Secretary. China watchers, including me, have long presumed that nothing would stand in the way of this well-telegraphed outcome. But history, and the current events that shape it, have an uncanny knack of shifting the leadership calculus in any country. That is true not only in democracies like the US but also in autocracies like Russia and China.
The choice for Xi is clear: He can stay the course set by his February 4 agreement with Russia, and be forever tainted with the sanctions, isolation, and excruciating economic and financial pressures that come with that stance. Or he can broker the peace that will save the world and cement China’s status as a great power led by a great statesman.
As the architect of the “Chinese dream” and what he believes is a great nation’s even greater rejuvenation, Xi has no choice. My bet is that Xi will do the unthinkable—defuse the Russia threat, before it is too late.
Stephen S. Roach, former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's chief economist, is a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at Yale's School of Management. He is the author of "Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China."