Xi's January of Discontents
Photo: EDGARD GARRIDO/REUTERS It’s only a few weeks into 2016, but Chinese president Xi Jinping must already feel nostalgia for the year gone by. Xi wasn't in town during my visit to frigid Beijing last week. He was abroad making his first tour of the Middle East, where he reaffirmed commitments to relations with Arab partners and inked a panoply of accords to deepen economic and security relations with Iran. But Xi’s Middle East tour offered him only a brief respite from