Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister and top diplomat, is a high-flying Sinologist and a fawning admirer of Xi Jinping, aspiring to write the Chinese president’s biography. Amid the ongoing Coronavirus threat, he deplores the “racism implicit (and sometimes explicit) in many responses to Chinese people around the world.” He has often accused members of the Liberal party of fomenting national hysteria about China, making a name for himself as a China apologist in Australia.

According to the author, “Xi’s management of the coronavirus crisis at home, and of politically totemic projects such as 5G expansion abroad, assumes a critical new significance.” Despite’s Xi iron grip on power and his ambition to “make China great,” the current crisis poses an enormous challenge to the authoritarian regime and has become a major test for Xi and the Communist Party.

It remains to be seen how effectively Beijing is managing the health emergency. “What is certain, however, is that the crisis, once resolved, will not change how China is governed in the future.”

The author highlights Xi’s “ten priorities” that aim to realise his “Chinese Dream”. – making China the world's dominant power after a century of humiliation at the hands of colonial powers in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

The first priority is to keep China’s Communist Party (CPC) strong. In Xi’s eyes, the party is not a “transition mechanism to some sort of democracy or semi-democracy,” but a vehicle for achieving “great-power status.” He also wants to make “China’s unique form of authoritarian capitalism” work, so that it could serve as an alternative economic system “applicable to other parts of the world.”

Second is the urgency of maintaining national unity, Xi does not tolerate pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong and Taiwan, suppressing all secessionist ambitions of the Uighurs in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang, and the people in Tibet.

Third, economic growth is vital for the CPC’s survival, because prosperity could tame citizens’ ambition to call for more democratic rights and freedoms. Xi seeks to make China the world leader in technology that helps expand its economy.

Fourth, Xi seeks to “incorporate environmental sustainability into China’s growth matrix,” due to popular discontent with dirty air, soil and water. His Belt-and-Road Initiative aims to help developing countries improve their infrastructure, prompting crittics to call it “debt-trap diplomacy.”

Fifth, China invests heavily on defence, aiming to build a “world-class military” that can “fight and win wars.”

Sixth, Beijing uses carrots and sticks in its coercive diplomacy as a means to “secure benign and (when possible) compliant relationships with China’s 14 neighboring states and six maritime neighbors.” It has no intention of renouncing its “territorial claims” in the East and South China Seas.

Seventh, China is determined to drive the US out of its backyard, back to the “second island chain” that runs from the Japanese archipelago through Guam to the eastern Philippines. This involves weakening US relations with its longstanding security alliances in the region, particularly those with South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.

Eight, Xi seeks to secure China’s foothold in Central Asia, turning it into a new market for Chinese goods, services, technology, and critical infrastructure investment. “Through the BRI, he also wants Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as Central, Eastern, and Western Europe, to become increasingly sensitized to and supportive of China’s core foreign-policy interests.”

Xi’s "ninth priority is manifested in the 'Maritime Silk Road', which is becoming as significant as the BRI. More broadly, China has also been successfully converting this global economic strategy into reliable G77 voting support in critical multilateral forums."

Finally, Xi’s ultimate goal is to dominate the world, reshaping the Western-led global order so that it is "more accommodating of Chinese interests and values." In recent years China has developed a "two-pronged strategy" - to mark its presence through increase of power, personnel, and financial influence within the existing global-governance institutions, and to build new, China-centric institutions like the BRI and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Indeed, many in the political establishment do not agree with Xi’s departure from Deng Xiaoping’s “longstanding” strategy of “hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead.” Critics say Xi’s overreach might come back to haunt him - perhaps “in the run-up to the party’s 20th National Congress in 2022, which will make the crucial decision about whether to extend Xi’s leadership term beyond previous term limits – through the 2020s and possibly beyond.”

Like all authoritarian leaders, Xi is plagued by insecurity. It explains why he has tightened the control in China, leaving nothing to chance.