It may be no exaggeration to say that Xi Jinping is now the world’s most powerful leader. To be fair, there’s not an awful lot of competition. Barack Obama, the US president, has been humbled abroad in Syria and weakened at home by the embarrassing failure of his healthcare plan. Perhaps prematurely, he is already being cast as a lame duck. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, may not see out her third term as head of what, by Chinese standards, is a medium-sized national enterprise. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, is in charge of the world’s most impressive printing press, though hardly its most robust economy. By default, that leaves Mr Xi, who has nine years left at the helm of an economy that could be the world’s biggest by the time he leaves office in 2020.
或許可以豪不誇張地講，習近平如今是世界上最有權勢的領導人。平心而論，在這一點上能與他一爭高下者不多。敘利亞問題讓美國總統巴拉克•歐巴馬(Barack Obama)在國際社會上灰頭土臉，醫改方案尷尬失敗，則削弱了他在國內的地位。儘管現在下結論或許爲時過早，但歐巴馬已開始被形容爲一隻「陂腳鴨」。德國總理安格拉•梅克爾(Angela Merkel)可能無法完成第三個總理任期——而按中國的標準來看，德國不過是一個中等規模的國家。日本首相安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)正掌管著全球馬力最足的印鈔機，不過日本絕對稱不上全球成長最強勁的經濟體。因此，勝利者自然就是習近平了。他的任期還有9年，到2020年他卸任時，中國可能將成爲全球第一大經濟體。