China is often its own worst enemy, but the Western world should not make decisions on policy expecting China to continue to make mistakes, warned Elizabeth Economy, one of the most renowned authors and experts on China, who was at FLAD to talk about the challenge that China poses and how Xi Jinping wants to transform the world in his image (and his interests). In this last session of the Democracy: The Way Ahead cycle, Elizabeth Economy also explained that Xi Jinping is the first Chinese leader in a long time to have a vision for the world, and for China’s place in it. The session was moderated by Raquel Vaz Pinto, Researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations of NOVA University. Watch the full session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1yGhFVitXk Elizabeth Economy is the author of several books that portray China’s evolution over the past two decades, including The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (2018) and The World According to China (2022), Elizabeth Economy is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Between 2021 and 2023 she was part of the Biden Administration, as senior foreign advisor for China at the Department of Commerce. She was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations between 1994 and 2021, of which she was also C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director for Asian Studies. The Democracy: The Way Ahead cycle is an initiative of FLAD, that since January 2023 promoted a space for reflection and debate on the current problems facing the Euro-Atlantic community, and, using international experts, to seek solutions for the coming decades. As part of this cycle, FLAD welcomed John Ikenberry, Professor at Princeton University, and Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, journalists Peter Baker (New York Times) and Susan Glasser (New Yorker), and international relations experts Robert Kaplan, Walter Russell Mead and Kori Schake, Bruno Tertrais and Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook.