The Xi-Putin axis is strengthened: too late to dismiss the two autocrats?
Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes have always used major sporting events for propaganda purposes. Everyone cites in this regard the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which provided Hitler with an ideal platform for projecting a positive image of Nazism. Apart from a few small "incidents", such as the four gold medals won by the African American Jesse Owens, which ruined the party for the fuhrer.
But there have been other more recent cases. At the time of the Cold War, Western nations and those allied to the USSR also competed to prove to the world that their respective socio-political systems were better than those of their adversaries. It is easy to recall, in this regard, the great enthusiasm of the PCI militants in the face of every victory of the Soviet athletes, of the GDR etc. In short, sport used as a weapon of political struggle.
Today the two old blocs are gone, although NATO retains a certain role as a Western shield, while the Russian Federation is implementing military agreements with many former Soviet republics, as recently seen in Belarus and Kazakhstan.
It is therefore quite natural that the People's Republic of China is taking advantage of the winter games currently taking place in Beijing to "refresh" its international image, much tarnished after the (still mysterious) incident in Wuhan, the repression of the democratic movement in Hong Kong, and the persecution of Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang.
The idea of lighting the Olympic brazier just by an Uyghur athlete, the cross-country skier Diniger Ylamuijang, was brilliant. She will have noticed that her gesture had a great propaganda value, since she intended to demonstrate that the persecution – or genocide, as many prefer to say – of the Uighurs is an invention of Western propaganda, which uses a flood of fake news to discredit the Chinese regime and its communist nature?
Yet the Chinese concentration camps, the famous laogai , are there for real in Xinjiang, as well as in Tibet and in other "autonomous" regions of the great Asian country. However, Beijing wants to show that these are simple prisons in which the inmates, almost always dissidents, spend their days working peacefully and receiving an appropriate "political re-education", as was already the case in the days of Mao Zedong.
What matters most, however, is Vladimir Putin's "heavy" presence at the Beijing Winter Games. The Russian leader had not moved from Moscow for a long time, apparently for fear of contracting Covid-19 . The fact that he has now decided to participate personally speaks volumes about his projects and future international scenarios.
Xi Jinping has indeed welcomed him warmly and has already had long talks with him. There had not been such cordial relations between Moscow and Beijing for a long time. The memory of the old hostility, which at one point even resulted in heavy military clashes on the Ussuri, has not been completely erased. The problem is that, now, the two leaders have realized that they need each other. The most powerful is Xi, but this does not prevent Putin from understanding that Russia is in great need of Chinese support, obviously in an anti-Western function.
The two regimes support each other when attacked for any reason. Putin has made it clear that he is in favor of the annexation of Taiwan. Xi was by no means opposed to Russian interventions in Kazakhstan and Belarus, attributing them a stabilizing function.
While it is not acceptable for Moscow to ask NATO to formally commit not to allow Ukraine to join the Atlantic Alliance, it is likely that more could be done to prevent the axis between the two regimes from becoming so strong. This is a problem that Biden will have to tackle quickly, as the United States, which is going through a difficult period internally, cannot face Beijing and Moscow at the same time.
Perhaps it is too late to divide the two autocrats, who should remain united to face a very weak and uncertain West. However, something can be done, and it is hoped that the great international experience of the US president will allow him to find solutions to detach, at least partially, the two autocrats.
The post The Xi-Putin axis is strengthened: too late to dismiss the two autocrats? appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/si-rafforza-lasse-xi-putin-troppo-tardi-per-allontanare-i-due-autocrati/ on Mon, 07 Feb 2022 03:52:00 +0000.