Xi jinping

When future historians chronicle the period after the Cold War, the rise of China will dominate their accounts. Beginning in the 2000s, China unleashed a flood of state-sponsored manufactures, many of them produced by western multinational corporations using Chinese labor on Chinese soil. This impoverished much of the already pressured industrial working class in the US and Europe, triggering populist revolts in rustbelts like the American Midwest, the north of England and eastern Germany. The recycling of profits from China’s chronic trade surpluses through the global financial system enriched western financial interests and helped to inflate bubbles in the real estate and stock markets. These burst in 2008, causing the Great Recession.

On May 9, Vladimir Putin had been due to review a parade of troops and military hardware on Red Square alongside Xi Jinping and Emmanuel Macron. Russia’s coronavirus lockdown forced Putin to cancel the elaborate celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe — as well as to postpone a national referendum that would have extended his personal rule until 2036. But though Putin and Xi have been deprived of the opportunity to make a show of solidarity amid the sea of Soviet flags that bedecks Moscow annually for Victory Day, the coronavirus crisis promises to throw Russia and China closer together than they have ever been. China needs friends; Russia needs money.

My first personal encounter with victims of a modern authoritarian government came last October, when I sat down with Zumret Dawut and Mirighul Tursun, two Uighur women who survived China’s so-called 're-education' camps in Xinjiang. I was particularly struck by one story from Ms Tursun:'She endured several days of beatings and electrocution. Her torturers mocked her when she called to Allah.'Then they ask me, "Where is your God? You say God, where is your God? Tell him, if he is stronger than me, to help you,”’ said Tursun.'Your god is Xi Jinping,' the guards told her.It is not enough for Chinese authorities to repress faith; they must also replace it with a secular, party-approved deity.

A successful dictator has to have ruthlessness, control, influence and competence. So how does China’s leader, Xi Jinping, rate as a dictator? Xi has been in power since 2012 and thus has enough of a track record to judge.On ruthlessness, he ranks highly. The concentration camps he has created for China’s Muslim minority in Xinjiang and the suppression of the movement in Hong Kong — in violation of the 1984 agreement with the UK — are the most tangible examples. The November 2019 leak of the 'Xinjiang Papers', more than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents, to The New York Times provided an unprecedented documentation of the origins and implementation of crackdown against Muslims of Xinjiang.

Michael Bloomberg’s entry into the race for the Democratic nomination for president has been underwhelming so far. As the race tightens, one of myriad problems for the candidate will be his close ties to the major national security threat posed by the US’s strategic rival — China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist party (CCP).Bloomberg panders to the CCP and to its leader, Xi Jinping, recently labeling him 'not a dictator' but rather just a politician, like any other duly elected leader, who has to satisfy his constituents. When challenged, Bloomberg stressed the point, saying 'no government survives without the will of the majority of its people, OK?' Xi, like all leaders, 'has to deliver services'.

This article is in The Spectator’s inaugural US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. Vladimir Putin, as we all know, has become chief electoral strategist in the western world. When he wanted Donald Trump president, he merely set his army of trolls to action and the American public was fooled into backing a candidate who would never have got anywhere near the White House otherwise. That is what the media has been telling us since 2016, anyway. But the idea that Russia can swing a sophisticated electorate of 300 million people with the aid of a fake-news tweet factory in St Petersburg was always fantastical. Even the Mueller inquiry could not prove it — not for want of trying.