Xi and Putin have become the ‘odd couple of chaos’
China and Russia aim to use an expanded BRICS to help knock down the walls of a democratic world order
It was meticulously choreographed to highlight the odd couple of “chaos.” With his expanding girth line, China’s supreme leader and military overlord Xi Jinping embraced Russia’s diminutive new czar and “war criminal” Vladimir Putin.
The scene was captured before the curtain went up on an expanded BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan on the banks of the Volga and Kazanka rivers. In truth, they resembled a comedy act from the bygone era of music halls.
Until they outlined their joint agenda of a new world order. It was the usual authoritarian rhetoric, blaming the United States and its democratic allies for the “chaos” in the world, conveniently forgetting Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Or, for that matter, China’s military bullying in the South China Sea and comrade Xi’s threat to take Taiwan by “force” if it does not abandon democracy and join the Communist Party cronies on the mainland.
“At present, the world is going through changes unseen in a hundred years, the international situation is intertwined with chaos,” Xi told Putin.
“But I firmly believe that the friendship between China and Russia will continue for generations, and great countries’ responsibility to their people will not change.”
Ten years into [Xi’s] rule, repression deepens across the country.
Human Rights Watch World Report 2024
Yet those words have a hollow ring:
- “Ten years into [Xi’s] rule, repression deepens across” China, the World Report 2024 by Human Rights Watch stated, adding:
- In Russia, “freedom of assembly remained effectively defunct. [The] authorities continued to harass, intimidate, and prosecute human rights defenders.”
- So much for the “people” in the world’s biggest autocracies.
Delve deeper: China is the economic powerhouse of the BRICS bloc. A founding member along with Brazil, Russia, and India, before South Africa joined in 2010. Since then, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates have been added to the club.
Between the lines: “The diverging economic trajectory of the five countries weakens the value of viewing the BRICS as a coherent grouping,” former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill, who coined the BRIC acronym, wrote before the group expanded.
Big picture: So, is the BRICS wall made of paper? “[It] looks impressive on a big map … but in terms of unity, that’s [when] you look twice,” Stewart Patrick, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Euronews.
China Factor comment: Still, Xi has propped up Russia’s economy and its armed forces in Ukraine despite calling for “peace talks.” He has also given the green light to destabilize the South and East China Seas. Hardly the actions of a man of “peace.”