Curtis: Who faces greater challenges to reform, the Xi-Li or the Obama administration?
Adjunct Professor at Queen's University and Chair of Statistics Canada's Advisory Committee on International Trade Statistics
- Curtis: Will the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations progress in the coming months?
- Curtis: What regional and/or international challenges are most pressing for the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, respectively?
- Curtis: Are criticisms of the preliminary nuclear accord with Iran prescient or paranoid?
Xi-Li would appear to have greater challenges: more domestic growth, improve the social security net, climate change requirements, unbalanced demographics (male-female, aging), accommodation of minorities, reform of SOEs, regional foreign policy issues, global foreign policy (especially vis-a-vis the other superpower, the U.S.), never mind maintaining balance with the many factions of the CCP. President Obama, on the other hand, has a well-established institutional structure to support him – his most difficult immediate challenge being overcoming the “fiscal cliff” and in the longer term improving education and health outcomes as well as infrastructure.
