This popular policy meme is used to suggest an institution is only as robust as its weakest point. A single short stave (短板 duǎnbǎn) renders a traditional wooden barrel unable to hold as much liquid as was intended, i.e. near useless. The image shows long and short staves as ‘advantages’ and ‘disadvantages’. Fond of the analogy, Xi Jinping likes to add that the base or ‘floor’ of the barrel is equally important. This works well with his ‘baseline thinking’, a theme gaining in strength in the wake of the Trump-era trade war and, above all, the COVID-19 pandemic.