China’s autocratic President Xi Jinping has been reported many times as believing that America is in terminal decline. This has encouraged him to double down on his ideological belief that socialism will somehow prove superior to market-led economies.

If it does, it would be a singular one-off, as experience, particularly the 1989 implosion of the Soviet Union and the failing states of Cuba and Venezuela, has demonstrated conclusively that command and control simply does not work as it is not able to respond to market changes, let alone popular needs.

So what would Xi make of Trump’s triumphant return and his adamantine determination to upend the status quo? The 47th US President clearly has his sights set on China which no longer has the international playing field to itself.

The biggest loser in the presidential contest was not Kamala Harris, but Xi Jinping. As Xi well knows, the US Navy remains the most powerful in the world and will not sit idly by as China continues to lock up the South China Sea and terrorise Taiwan.

Xi seems to think that he can steer a multi-trillion dollar economy from the top, when the genius of the free enterprise system shows that it derives from being responsive to pressures from below.

While Xi lumbers along and China continues to under-perform, the US economy goes from strength to strength, poised to get a massive injection of efficiency and productivity.

Deng Xiaoping’s credo of ‘To Get Rich is Glorious’ has long since been discarded, with Xi worried that billionaire entrepreneurs will attain rockstar status and become a threat to his pre-eminence.

Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ is therefore likely to be a bridge too far for Xi, but the last hundred years have shown that, brutal though it might seem, it has been extremely effective in re-inventing America.

Moreover, other one-party states such as Iran have enormous difficulty in achieving peaceful and successful regime change, let alone delivering the prosperity its citizens desire.

Despite a multitude of checks and balances, the American system delivers the ultimate prize to the winner, who is almost guaranteed a four-year term, which neither the British, Australian, or the Chinese systems can offer-one false one big, false step and you’re out. Just ask Liz Truss.

As a result, dictators like Xi Jinping are much more inclined to be risk averse than the ultimate risk taker, Donald Trump.

A very clear difference between the two leaders is that Trump has spent many years in private enterprise in the building and construction sector. He succeeded in earning more than a billion dollars in the process. Xi, on the other hand, is simply another machine politician who has worked his way up the greasy pole, never having to earn a living in private enterprise.

Trump has heralded his ‘golden age’ as ‘a revolution of common sense’, so there is no secret sauce, just conventional economics, which, unfortunately for Xi, is almost ideology free.

Elon Musk’s DOGE has enormous potential to dramatically reduce the cost of government and the numbers required to run it, but Xi would be terrified by the unemployment consequences.

One of the biggest course corrections in history, after four years of wallowing in mediocrity under Joe Biden, clearly demonstrates the genius of the democratic process. Of particular note is that it is a great example of the people striking back against the elites, as Trump has long recognised.

Moreover, despite Trump’s radicalism, it has not produced any furious response, rather relief that someone is finally doing something serious about getting America back on track.

Having once brutally divided the Republican Party he has now bent it to his will, so that they are now his biggest supporters.

Even Politico, which describes itself as a centrist online publication, now describes Trump as, ‘Someone with an ability to perceive opportunities that most politicians do not, and to forge powerful, sustained connections with large swathes of people in ways that no contemporary can match. In other words: He is a force of history.’ Nobody thinks Trump is a nobody any more.

For those who find Trump’s personal characteristics distasteful, Roger Kimball, editor on the New Criterion, points out that the legendary Horace Walpole once observed that, ‘No country was ever saved by good men, because good men will not go to the lengths that may be necessary.’

Progressives simply refuse to accept that a flawed individual can be a successful leader. Two classic Australian examples are Bob Hawke and Shane Warne.

To add insult to injury, most of China’s few supporters have already suffered serious setbacks, with Russia and Iran leading the way.

It would therefore be surprising if we continue to hear prognostications that China will soon overtake America. Only in Xi’s dreams.

Richard Alston is a former senator, federal minister and Australian High Commissioner in London. He is the author of Donald Trump: The Ultimate Contrarian (Connor Court, 2021)