If Xi’s program is duly followed, Xiism promises a pinnacle of prosperity in 2049—precisely 100 years after the founding of the People’s Republic of China—at which point Xi avers that the Communist Party will “solve all the country’s problems” and the Chinese Dream will be fulfilled. China will be “strong, democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious,” he vows, adding that in his view, “realizing the great renewal of the Chinese nation is the greatest dream in modern history.”

It’s either a scary or an inspiring vision, depending on how you view the consequences of China’s aspirations to preeminence. For this American, at least, one of the more unsettling aspects of the vision is the degree to which the United States barely exists at all—neither as an enemy nor, to borrow Xi’s description of the U.S. in 2014, as a partner in “non-confrontation, non-conflict, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.”

Xi’s utopian world, as mapped out in The Governance of China, is one in which the United States is an insignificant, faraway blip, and countries that China can manage mostly without fear (Russia) or regard benevolently as obedient tributaries (Tanzania) fill the void.

The book is also a testament to the construction of Xi’s persona, and how the state is tapping into both imperial tradition and lingering nostalgia for Red China to present the Chinese leader as everything to everybody: a Marxist messiah for leftists, a people’s emperor for peasants, and a righteous, thundering Jeremiah for urban constituencies fed up with corruption.

This is the Gospel of Xi.

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The terminology of the Chinese Dream appears to be a ripoff of the American Dream and, perhaps, a 2012 Thomas Friedman column in The New York Times, whose entire website, including that column, has since been blocked in China. (The Atlantic’s James Fallows also used the phrase as the headline of a feature six months before Xi Jinping spoke it aloud.)

Whatever its origin, the Chinese Dream (or “China Dream,” as it is rendered in Chinese) has become the trademark slogan of Xi’s administration since he first publicly uttered the words in a November 2012 speech at the opening of an exhibition in Beijing called the “Road to Renewal.” The exhibit featured artifacts related to China’s defeats from the Opium Wars of the 19th century to the Qing Dynasty’s overthrow in 1911—events that have been enshrined in Chinese history as symbols of humiliation—and served as a stage for Xi to pronounce the Chinese Dream “the long-cherished hope of several generations.”

The speech was brief, and the details sketchy, but the “dream” terminology soon spread everywhere in China: to TV shows and advertisements, to the Party’s ubiquitous red propaganda banners, to the landing strip of China’s first aircraft carrier.

Like the American Dream, in common parlance the Chinese Dream can mean many things to many people. But for Xi, it spells out a somewhat more specific prophecy of China’s ascendance to military, economic, and cultural power. It’s not just a slogan, but a particular vision of utopia that could materialize in 34 years if the Chinese people are willing to stick with the Communist Party.