Xi’s warning to Trump in the march of the autocrats
China’s president issues a blunt message about ‘Cold War mentality’ to his gang of deplorables
No world for old men? Try telling that to China’s aging autocrat Xi Jinping and his elderly gang of deplorables who make up the Axis of Upheaval. Along with 72-year-old Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, he tore into the world order under the guise of “peace.”
In a keynote speech, the septuagenarian leader celebrated the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and Japan’s surrender to the Allies with a blunt message. It came amid a massive military parade, bristling with state-of-the-art weapons of destruction.
“[A] Cold War mentality, hegemonism, and protectionism haunt the world. New threats have been increasing,” Xi said today in an address from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, near the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
“The world has found itself in a new period of turbulence and transformation. Global governance has come to a new crossroads,” the Chinese president and supreme warlord warned, taking aim at the United States.
“Humanity is again faced with a choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, and win-win outcomes or zero-sum games,” he added, in a swipe at another old man, US President Donald Trump, and his “America First” policy of trade and tech wars.
To see the cost of Trump’s bullying, tally the world leaders [in Beijing].
The Economist
Line of conflict:
- In reply, 79-year-old Trump lampooned Xi’s highly choreographed bash, attended by a host of foreign leaders, including North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un.
- “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America,” he wrote on his Truth Social media site.
Delve deeper: The Trump White House has to take a large slice of the blame for why “world leaders” flocked to China for “Xi’s anti-American party,” The Economist magazine pointed out in a newsletter this week.
Between the lines: “To see the cost of Trump’s bullying, tally the world leaders [in Beijing]. Xi [is playing] host to over 20 presidents and prime ministers [as] a new reality is taking hold,” the London-based publication said.
Big picture: In a show of patriotism and loyalty to the ruling Communist Party, more than 200,000 flags fluttered across Beijing. Yet they failed to hide the diminished role the Party played under Chairman Mao Zedong in defeating Japan’s Imperial Army.
Bottom line: “[In fact, it] opposes the largely accurate narrative that the communists sat out much of the war against the Japanese,” Professor Joseph Torigian, at Stanford’s Hoover History Lab, wrote in a guest post for ChinaTalk this week.
China Factor comment: The heavy fighting involved troops from Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government. But they were purged from China’s psyche after Mao’s civil war victory in 1949. All that is left now is smoke and, red-and-yellow-starred, mirrors.