Chinese President Xi Jinping's ideology is getting in the way of achieving what he set out to do for China.

Repression across China has increased under Xi's leadership since 2013, and it has been condemned around the world.

He intends to lead China to become the world's largest economy with a mixed socialist market system, a global leader in technological innovation with a modernized military, and the major force in Asia and beyond.

These goals have been arranged into an ideological architecture which has not only been written into the Chinese constitution, but is meant to determine all facets of life and policy in China.

However in reality, aspects necessary for China to become a technological and economic leader are hindered by the practical application of Xi Jinping thought.

Rumors were racing everywhere I went in Beijing this July. Had a secret coup toppled the government? Was the Chinese economy on the verge of collapse? Had popular discontent, triggered by U.S. tariffs, reached the point of explosion?

One deeper question lurked beneath these others: Had Xi Jinping—China's top leader, who presents himself as all but omnipotent—overstepped his limits thanks to overconfidence in the inevitability of China's rise?

At the center of this question are not simply the facts that fill headlines about China under Xi.

The "personality cult" that Xi has built up since coming to power in 2013 is extraordinarily visible—on posters, on websites, in competitions to read the president's work with the most sincerity—and some observers criticize it as reminiscent of the Mao era's fervid devotion to the "Great Helmsman."

The intensified repression that Xi has overseen across China, especially in the western province of Xinjiang, which has become an unprecedented "digital police state," has been condemned around the world.

Nor is the problem just U.S. President Donald Trump's erratic trade actions, which have imposed hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese goods and threatened other economic punishments.

The core uncertainties are rooted in concern arising from Xi's worldview about governing China—and how that worldview collides with reality.

For the leader of an opaque political system, Xi is remarkably forthright about how he sees the world and has taken actions in line with this worldview. He and his team of obedient officials constantly trumpet a set of ideas about how China should be governed and how China fits into a changing world.

To borrow a phrase from Mao Zedong, Xi believes that politics should be in command. Xi envisions China becoming a self-reliant superpower with the Chinese Communist Party firmly in control over all aspects of life.

He intends to lead China to become the world's largest economy with a mixed socialist market system, a global leader in technological innovation with a modernized military, and the major force in Asia and beyond.

He sees this as restoring its historic stature, the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" that only the CCP can produce.

These sprawling ambitions are carefully arranged into an ideological architecture—one that has been honed to a startling degree at a time when so many other world leaders appear erratic and unfocused.

This ideology was recently written into the Chinese Constitution. It's called "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,"or Xi Jinping thought for short.

Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in Beijing in November 2017. Thomas Peter/Getty

This ideology is both backward-looking and forward-looking. It draws most directly on traditional Chinese culture and Marxist dialectical materialism, presenting Xi as the heroic avatar who can unite and carry forward those lineages.

It seeks to adapt them to the 21st century—becoming what the Chinese scholar Jiang Shigong calls a "guide to action"and the basis of a newfound "cultural self-confidence and political maturity."

Xi has been explicit that policy work (whether economic policy, foreign policy, or beyond) is meaningful only if it is built on this ideological foundation.

His ideology aims to strengthen his individual mandate, identify the party with a set of principles, guide the development of policy, and foster values and beliefs in party members and the Chinese people. In other words, it aims to affect reality.

There are two big questions here. One is whether Xi Jinping thought will actually be able to strengthen the party and Xi himself or will have little to no effect.

The other is whether strengthening the party and Xi will, in turn, facilitate or undermine the real-world success of the numerous policy goals that are part of China's "great rejuvenation."

These challenges are playing out in technological innovation, one of Xi's central objectives. Innovation is bound up in both the Marxist and cultural lineages that Xi invokes.

Xi has called technological innovation "the primary driving force behind development,"a materialist assessment that echoes Marx's views about productive technology.

Technology itself is, for Xi, an "advanced productive force,"and innovation means the material capacity to stand, self-reliant, at "the frontiers of science and technology." But technological innovation is also proudly invoked as a central quality of traditional Chinese culture.

Xi often praises ancient China's "four great inventions”—paper, printing, the compass, and gunpowder—when he speaks about his country's greatness.

But this means that Xi's ideology isn't just an abstraction—it's supposed to manifest itself in real technological innovation. If China doesn't manage to become a world leader in innovation, Xi Jinping thought hits a wall.

And within this worldview, that means the entire project of rejuvenation might collapse. The tenets of "Mao Zedong thought"were discarded in a prior era because they didn't deliver on their promises, and the same fate could befall Xi Jinping thought. So, Xi's China must innovate.

Of course, innovation arises not just from the top-down provision of resources but from individual creativity and society's bottom-up ferment. In the real world, there are plenty ofreasons to innovate—fromcuriosity and obsession to the pursuit offame and fortune—that exist in China well beyond the central leadership's control.