The Harvard man who became Xi Jinping’s favourite academic

Xi Jinping is a busy man. He holds down three jobs. As General Secretary of the Chinese Communist party (CCP), he rules 1.4 billion people and disciplines 100 million party members; as Chairman of the Military Commission, he commands and reforms the world’s largest army; and as president, he glad-hands a succession of Beijing-bound heads of states. In his spare time he has also authored ten books.

So you can be sure that when he carves out time for a separate meeting with a hitherto unremarkable American academic, it is not without purpose. Graham Allison, in case you have not heard of him, is an historian with a chair at Harvard. He met with Xi Jinping and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as part of a delegation of American business executives earlier this year.

Allison is clearly not a bad man. If you read his outpourings on his recent visit to China, he sincerely wants a world of peace and cooperation.