Xi Jinping is consolidating power just as China has embarked on an unprecedented push to become a global and technological power. Xi’s followers are fashioning an economic and administrative system that they hope can achieve these ambitious goals. Some parts of this multi-stranded program will succeed and some will fail. The global economy—and global power relations—will depend on the balance between success and failure, and the ways in which Chinese manages the success and failure of individual initiatives. Barry Naughton is the Sokwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at UCSD. He is one of the world’s most highly respected economists working on China. He is an authority on the Chinese economy with an emphasis on issues relating to industry, trade, finance and China’s transition to a market economy. The "Harvard on China" podcast is hosted by James Evans at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University.