Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States this week is the sort of public relations opportunity that normally bolsters the Communist Party’s stature back home. Yet given a nearly 40 percent drop in China’s stock markets in the last few months, there’s hardly been a time in recent years when the country’s international reputation has been so widely doubted and questioned. Moreover, this poor economic performance means that the Communist party’s vice-like grip on power may soon be shaken—or at least confronted by an unhappy and much poorer Chinese middle class.
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