In choosing how to navigate China’s future, Xi Jinping can look back at two very different courses charted by two earlier General Secretaries of the Communist Party of Party, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

Mao promoted himself as The Great Helmsman. Xi Jinping now seeks a similar mantle of cultish admiration. In contrast, Deng saw the PRC ship of state and compared it to the US ship of state.

Looking at the US ship, Deng saw diversity and prosperity. Diversity put many hands on the large, round wheel of the helm. Prosperity spread broadly among passengers. He watched dancing under electric lights and heard gaiety of self-expression over the drone of engines driving the US ship.

When he turned to the Communist Party’s ship of state, he beheld human masses slumping over oars, splashing them rhythmically in the water, paced by the Party’s drums. He saw Mao’s hand firmly and solely on a tiny, straight tiller, steering the ship of state, and Mao’s gaze inattentive to perils or opportunities ahead or around. Mao, instead, aimed his watch and wrath at hands he perceived as reaching to touch the tiller. Deng decided he wanted a ship of state more like America’s. He built a bigger, better boat. He institutionalized shifting steering authority at least every ten years. Under Deng’s navigation, from 1980 and far into the 21st century, China’s economy grew faster than any other major economy in the world. Deng’s course plotting raised hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty.

Sadly, General Secretary Xi makes choices that concentrate steering authority in one fallible and frail helmsman. Xi’s steering is already shrinking Chinese wealth and welfare into a smaller ship of state.