The last lesson that China’s government will take from Russia’s experience is that it is essential to hardwire the Chinese economy against the kinds of financial and economic sanctions that the US and the European Union are now using to isolate and enfeeble Russia.

To avoid suffering the same fate, Xi’s government will accelerate longstanding efforts to strengthen the renminbi’s international position, open China’s capital account, and increase the currency’s share of global foreign-exchange reserves. That will make it more difficult for the US and its allies to seize Chinese assets than it was for them to freeze Russia’s central-bank reserves.

Xi will also be motivated to redouble his effort to make China a “self-reliant” economy, by selectively decoupling supply chains from the West, supporting domestic technological self-sufficiency, and ensuring food and energy security. But beyond prompting China to double down on these existing policies, the war in Ukraine is unlikely to change the regime’s outlook significantly. Under Xi, China has already been pursuing economic self-sufficiency, financial and technological resilience, and a military modernization geared toward challenging, and someday displacing, US strategic primacy.

For Xi, a Marxist-Leninist dialectician, the events in Ukraine won’t fundamentally alter the great “trend of the times,” which he has defined as “the East rising, the West declining.” Xi personally believes that he is a “great man,” able to channel the tides of history and fulfill China’s destiny – including through the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.