BEIJING, July 2 -- The Great Hall of the People filled with ordered ceremony on Tuesday, and Xi Jinping walked to the podium carrying fourteen years of unchallenged authority and a message he believes history is now confirming in ways that extend far beyond China's borders.

The occasion was the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. What Xi said from that podium was aimed at an audience considerably larger than the assembled leadership inside the hall.

"The world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation, putting humanity at a crossroads," Xi told the delegates, Xinhua reported. China, he argued, had demonstrated something irreducible in the midst of that turbulence: that a country could indust...