Tag: Gorbachev, Mikhail S

For China’s Xi and Other Strongmen, Gorbachev Showed Exactly What Not to Do

Chin@Strategy

In much of the West, Mikhail S. Gorbachev is hailed as the farsighted visionary who brought the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion. But for autocratic leaders in other parts of the world, his legacy stands as a cautionary tale of power discarded quickly and, by some estimates, cavalierly, with little or nothing in return. This lesson has been taken most to heart in China, where Xi Jinping is expected to be anointed to a third term as the country’s top leader during a Communist Party congress announced for October.…

Bristling Against the West, China Rallies Domestic Sympathy for Russia

Chin@Strategy

While Russian troops have battered Ukraine, officials in China have been meeting behind closed doors to study a Communist Party-produced documentary that extols President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a hero. The humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union, the video says, was the result of efforts by the United States to destroy its legitimacy. With swelling music and sunny scenes of present-day Moscow, the documentary praises Mr. Putin for restoring Stalin’s standing as a great wartime leader and for renewing patriotic pride in Russia’s past. To the world, China…