So I was surprised to read Fu Ying's op-ed in the Financial Times the following day, which, in the face of a lot of bad news for China ... ignored all of it and attacked the US-led international system: The Western-centred world order dominated by the US has made great contributions to human progress and economic growth. But those contributions lie in the past. Now that same order is like an adult in children's clothes. It is failing to adjust. A woman takes a nap as a man looks at an electronic board displaying stock prices at a brokerage house in Beijing on Monday as sharemarket indices tumbled. Credit:Andy Wong Since the end of the Cold War, the US has made major strategic mistakes, one after another. Its invasion of Iraq in 2003 created chaos that lasts to this day. In 2010, after political upheaval in Tunisia, the West encouraged the so-called Arab Spring. The US and its allies are opening a Pandora's box in one country after another .... Earlier than we expected, the weight of international responsibilities is falling on Chinese shoulders. We need to come up with more specific ideas, to reassure others and advance our common interests.

I'm not sure that specific ideas from China really will reassure that many people, but the more interesting question is: Why, given China's myriad difficulties, is this coming up now? This could very well be just a random opinion piece. Fu is chairwoman of the National People's Congress's foreign affairs committee, which as I understand means she isn't exactly a nobody, but she isn't exactly a somebody either. So maybe this should be interpreted the same way one would interpret an opinion piece by US presidential candidate Rand Paul at this point – interesting but ultimately inconsequential. The US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen which in October sailed within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, one of several artificial islands that China has built in the disputed Spratly Islands chain in the South China Sea. Credit:New York Times But it also got me thinking: What if Xi decided that the best way to deal with China's problems was to tack in a more aggressive, revisionist manner? Objectively, such a move would not be all that great for China. As I argued in my book The System Worked, China has acted like a responsible stakeholder in the current system because of the benefits it derives from that system. And I have argued consistently that the benefits of less revisionist behaviour for China were obvious compared to Russia. But if Russian President Vladimir Putin has managed to do one thing in the past few years, it has been to get his citizens to ignore the objective worsening of the Russian economy.

It turns out that for many countries, nationalism does a much better job of inspiring the masses than other ideologies. And as China's problems mount and its economy slows, one has to wonder if, at some point, Xi will decide to adopt a more revisionist take on the international system. I don't think this is going to happen any time soon. I suspect Fu's op-ed is more noise than signal. But I also wanted to put these concerns in print. Because as rough as the first week of 2016 looks, that's nothing compared to what the rest of this year would look like if Xi decides to become a full-throated nationalist. Washington Post Follow FairfaxForeign on Twitter Follow FairfaxForeign on Facebook