China's Xi Jinping Seizes Role as

“No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war,” Mr. Xi, the leader of the world’s second-biggest economy, said in hourlong speech on Tuesday to members of the world elite gathered for the annual World Economic Forum. “Pursuing protectionism is just like locking one’s self in a dark room. Wind and rain may be kept outside, but so are light and air.”

The Chinese leader’s message comes as the U.S. prepares to inaugurate President-elect Donald Trump, a vociferous skeptic of trade who has vowed to put America first.

Mr. Xi sought to portray Beijing as a benevolent power intent on upholding an international order that has boosted common prosperity. He exhorted world leaders to “join hands and rise to the challenge.”.... “There is a vacuum in global leadership. Xi sees it and he seizes it,” said Carl Bildt, a former prime minister of Sweden, who was in the audience. “If the U.S. does take a more mercantilist route, overall the Asians and Europeans will have to combine to preserve global free trade.”''

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In many ways, Mr. Xi—and his government—are deeply ambivalent about globalization. Mr. Xi is an unabashed nationalist, who resents the West’s lecturing on human rights and democracy. He has sought to bulk up state-run companies and kept China’s internet isolated behind its Great Fire Wall.

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Mr. Xi stressed that no power should attempt to dictate to other countries a specific path. Development, he said, is “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” borrowing a phrase from U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Some in the audience noted irony in the appeal from the leader of a country that has undermined competition.

Foreign companies and governments complain that China has moved to restrict foreign companies’ access to its markets, while buying up technology and assets from firms abroad. The U.S. and Europe also accuse China of selling goods from steel to solar panels at improperly low prices.

The article's thrust is right -- if Xi is really going to seize a role as "leader of globalization", beyond just rhetoric, Beijing's conduct will have to change meaningfully. China's participation in globalization in the past decade+ has been hugely lop-sided, and that's a major reason for the backlash now.