Why So Many Are Buying What Xi and Putin Are Selling
In their ideological struggle with the US and Europe, the Chinese and Russian autocrats can tap into a still-rich vein of anti-Westernism around the world.
Joining the ideological battle.
Photographer: Grigory Sysoyev/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images
After months of listening to US President Joe Biden declare democracy to be in mortal conflict with autocracy, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are launching an ideological counterattack. Last month, Xi explicitly denounced the US and its Western allies for pursuing “containment from all directions, encirclement and suppression against us.” Putin signed a 42-page document outlining a foreign policy aimed at curbing Western “dominance.”
Theirs hardly matches the ardor and eloquence of Mao Zedong’s speech inaugurating the People’s Republic of China in 1949: “Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation.” Nikita Khrushchev was punchier in insisting that communism was more resilient than capitalism: “We will bury you.”