At the Communist Party’s 19th Congress in 2017, Xi Jinping told the assembled cadres that China was ready to “enter the center stage of global affairs.” With the U.S. and its Western allies now imposing harsh economic sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, China’s time may have come.  As generations of Chinese leaders had envisioned, China’s economic prowess now provides it with the capacity to backstop any major country that faces financial sanctions put in place by