Two Dictators Meet – Trustnodes

After claiming a detente and after declaring neutrality towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Chairman of the Communist Chinese Party Xi Jinping has decided not to just visit Moscow but to spend three days there, and none in Ukraine.

To make the point even more blatantly, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a surprise visit to Kyiv at the same time as Xi told Russia’s president Vladimir Putin: “I firmly believe that the Russian people will continue to give you firm support.”

That was in the context of Putin running for president again, which officially would give him the title of dictator as it would breach his own term laws, which are not just a piece of paper you can change.

The Chairman has already done so, after cracking down on democracy protests in Hong Kong, arresting hundreds of thousands ostensibly on ‘corruption’ charges, stealing the business of successful entrepreneurs like Jack Ma, and after presiding on a global pandemic that began both in his shores and under his watch.

In any system of accountability, he would have gone. In a leader cult system as communist parties tend to provide however, he goes to meet the man that launched an unprovoked war, without Russia being attacked in any way whatever.

And yet to the world they say unlike the west, they won’t preach about human rights and all these pesky issues. No, they’ll send the tanks instead, both against their own people as in Tiananmen square and of course against any pesky democracy like Ukraine, or any country that has such stupid ideas like sovereignty or independence.

The skill of turning a lack of care about human rights, which of course means no human rights, into an anti-western point however, speaks to the vast experience in propaganda that China in particular has and Russia has gained.

And it is propaganda where we might get a sign that this is not just a meeting, but a merger in a way of the two countries as among numerous agreements, they signed:

1. An agreement on the exchange of information and cooperation between the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (ITAR-TASS)” (Russian Federation) and the Information Agency “Xinhua” (People’s Republic of China).
2. Memorandum of Cooperation between the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company” and the China Media Corporation.
3. Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on cooperation in the field of joint production of television programs.

Joint production of television programs sounds like a strange area of cooperation at the president’s level. At most that’s the ministry of culture and other things, but in a democracy.

In a dictatorship, it clearly has a very high priority because the injustices are too many to tolerate without it, and because it can turn good into bad if there is no counter-voice to point out that it is actually good.

And human rights are good, self-evidently. That the world’s second biggest economy in fact considers it a propaganda point to say they don’t care about human rights, should worry all.

Non western countries in fact should be worried the most, from Africa to Latin America and Asia, because the west is rich and powerful and can defend itself, but some of these African countries that are welcoming Russian soldiers may well find they no longer have sovereignty.

There won’t be any voices in Russia or China guilt tripping about slave trade hundreds of years ago or pointing out some fine principles to restrain their government, but only unchallenged propaganda to justify any action, including unprovoked invasions.

The world however has forgotten much of this, enjoying for long an expansion of liberty, including in Russia and China until recently.

That’s to the point Chinese media routinely claims, as they say Russia’s president stated, that China’s economic gains “proves the superiority of China’s national system and governance system.”

Superiority, the tanks against students or the arresting of doctors that were trying to raise the alarm about the pandemic, or indeed the closing down of crypto activity without public consultation or court recourse.

It’s not just China that has seen such rise however. Indonesia has too and they’re a democracy. Japan rose even more and they’re a developed country, as is South Korea, both rising at a far higher speed and in a shorter time than China.

What all four have in common, and for China until recently, is that they actually followed our way of doing things, and thus have sustainably kept their gains.

Whether China will be able to, remains to be seen as the Chairman now explicitly states:

“Consolidating and developing China-Russia relations is a strategic choice… to support world multi-polarization.”

Polarizing the world, for unclear aims except some sort of vanity to be on top and dictate, because objectively you’d want a world where there’s cooperation to the mutual benefit, not polarization.

And yet that’s their aim. To divide the world while speaking against ‘Cold War mentality.’ While with the other breath they speak of the ‘century of humiliation’ at the hands of these others and their ‘superiority’ of ‘national system.’

To aid their divisive aims, they’ve now come up with new terms like the global south, forgetting of course that Russia is as north as you can be and China is not quite south either.

They mean India, Africa and Latin America, which vaguely the west apparently has not treated well even though South Africa is the richest in the continent because of the west and Brazil is doing pretty well in great part because by plenty it is seen as western and europeanish, like Spain or Portugal or Italy, just a little less developed.

While for India, their soldiers have been fist fighting with Chinese soldiers. In contrast, the British Prime Minister is of Indian origin.

The corrosive power of unchallenged propaganda aside, one does wonder just what India really thinks looking at these close relations between Russia and China. How exactly they can continue to support Russia by buying tons of oil while Russia agrees to basically run Chinese propaganda on their state TV, and China agrees to run Russian propaganda, including presumably regarding the invasion.

Fundamentally however this display, the three day holiday and all the rest, is a sign of weakness because no one wants to meet either Putin or Xi, so they only have each other to meet and to show they are very busy with many places to go, meet for days on end.

They both have become very isolated, because unlike what their propaganda claims, no one likes dictatorship, not even dictators themself if they are at the receiving end of it.

Some can be fooled, though at a country level that’s usually hard unless its some little African nation, but no one is deluded enough to think a China led global order wouldn’t come with an iron fist.

They naturally claim to the contrary, they wouldn’t interfere in your national affairs, and yet their first step in Russia has been to get their propaganda on state TV so that they can get away with whatever they want.

The only difference between their interference and Western interference is that the west tends to just talk – unless it is extraordinary circumstances like being attacked in the heart of New York. They however, and especially Xi’s good friend, don’t like talking at all and think tanks are enough for talk.

Afterall, the invasion of Ukraine began in 2014, just days after it became a democracy, and it was invaded to overturn that democracy.

It’s not the only instance either. The coup in Myanmar was the first indication to anyone observing that their pitch of ‘no interference, no ideology’ was lies to actually state that only dictatorship is acceptable.

And all this matters to crypto, as well as business more widely, because China has banned crypto exchanges and miners, and any country they order may well ban them too.

Naturally any country that bans crypto, from our point of view and hundreds of millions across the world in this space, can’t have a superior system.

That’s a regressive system, one that sees innovation as a potential threat, because it is new and unknown and can’t be controlled by the party.

Putin sings a different tune on crypto, but Pavel Durov is not yet in Russia. The founder of Telegram was exiled and by the state, so we can imagine what the response would have been if crypto was invented in a world where China and Russia dictate.

The furthest Russia could go however was East Berlin, and the furthest people from that region in China could go was Moscow. So the world order isn’t changing anytime soon for Europe or America.

Instead both of these two countries might become poorer as we move production away, our ingenuity and innovation.

Time for Europe to re-think its approach to China as we see these images coming from Moscow, because by acts they have clearly picked a side, and by words they claim their dictatorship to be superior.

They have not supplied arms as far as it is known, which would require potentially even drastic acts like a Presidential order to order all companies to get out of China, but this overt show of support for a country that calls the United States an enemy and has Putin on record as stating such, does reveal a very new China than even a couple of years ago.

Facts have changed, and unlike with Russia we perhaps shouldn’t make the same mistake of being in denial to the point the French president Macron claims surprise he was kicked out of some African countries by that Russie.

Deluded, and lacking wit, are unfortunate words to have to use considering his current domestic situation, but it wasn’t just him of course prior to a couple of years ago, it was all of us.

And those all should now realize that these two dictators are saying some things, and that we should take them at their word, in regards to their ambitions and plans to polarize the world and dictate it around.