
First published: The Telegraph 01/05/2022
At the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing in early February, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin stood shoulder to shoulder to declare the two countries’ “friendship without limits”. In a 5,000-word statement meant to highlight their unbreakable bond, the pair sought to exploit what they believed to be the terminal decline of the West. Their intent was to make the world safe for autocracy.
Since then, world aNairs have not evolved as the pair expected, to say the least. Europe, the US and their allies around the world have come together in support of Ukraine. The old global system the two autocrats had been so dismissive of is fighting back. Putin’s Russia has become a pariah in the global system, and Xi’s China will have to bear the consequences of committing to support it. Read on….https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/01/west-got-china-catastrophically-wrong/