Is China about to make the Japanese and American economies great again?
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's big Oct. 22 election win and U.S. President Donald Trump's scandals grabbed most of the global headlines over the last week. But the most epochal geopolitical event was Chinese Persident Xi Jinping's coronation in Beijing. The opulence of Xi's crowning surely got Trump's attention. On Oct. 25, the U.S. leader told Fox News that "now, some people might call him the king of China."
Some might be tempted to bestow a parallel standing to Abe, whose party is enjoying uncontested reign as far as the eye can see. Chaos among opposition forces means there's virtually no palace intrigue in Tokyo. Sadly, that also means reduced urgency domestically for the Liberal Democratic Party to accelerate structural reforms.