https://www.theguardian.com/world/comme ... ing-matter?
China’s paramount leader, like his Russian counterpart, is making a fine mess of his country’s economy and world standing
Sun 13 Aug 2023 06.00 BST
t must be tough, being a dictator, when your diktats are ignored, thwarted and scorned. Vladimir Putin is a sad case in point. He ordered the glorious reintegration of Ukraine into his imaginary Russian empire. What he got was an existential crisis that he couldn’t control.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, is another paramount leader with dictatorship issues. Xi presumes to exercise supreme control, channelling Mao Zedong like a card-carrying Communist party Zeus – yet repeatedly messes up. Xi’s signature tune could be the chorus to Moby’s Extreme Ways: “Then it fell apart ... Like it always does.”
One example: Xi’s misjudged “no limits” pre-Ukraine invasion pact with Putin has turned out to be an embarrassing, friends-without-benefits own goal. Another example: his unleashing of confrontational “wolf warrior” diplomacy against the west, which has produced a huge anti-China backlash.
Putin and Xi: a Laurel and Hardy duo for the modern age – except it’s no joke. Both have much to answer for, or would in any open society. If either man were subject to genuine democratic scrutiny or free elections, he’d be booted out without a second thought – then put on trial.
Putin has remade Russia in his image: lawless, vilified, distrusted. Flailing Xi’s offence, if anything, is worse. He’s endangering the Chinese “miracle” – decades of big post-Deng Xiaoping, post-Tiananmen economic and social advances – in a messianic drive to wield unchecked personal power.