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President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pose for a photo with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Mrs. Peng Liyuan. Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen For all of President Donald Trump’s unpredictability, he does have some consistencies, one being his love of a reviled ruler. He’s praised Vladimir Putin as a “genius” and “tough”. Kim Jong Un is an “absolute leader”, Viktor Orbán is “great” (or was – this may have since been revised). This may have since been revised. And despite all the heat around trade, Trump really likes Xi Jinping. Cancel that – he loves him, as he said at Davos in 2020. It’s obvious why. Xi is everything Trump aspires to be: the leader of a country with the most technologically advanced form of censorship, a nation of 1.125 billion internet users all behind a firewall and many, many surveillance cameras; a place where ethnic and religious minorities are locked up and human rights defenders jailed. Xi has managed to largely get away with it – the outrage today is frankly way too muted. China has even bought complicity from other countries. I should have been at the RightsCon event in Zambia last week which brings together leaders from around the world to talk about human rights and technology. Only, it was cancelled at the eleventh hour – Chinese state level interference apparently. Xi has spoken against “hostile forces” when it comes to the nation’s history, a handy excuse to stamp out anything or anyone painting the past unfavourably: it’s forbidden to mention the Tiananmen Square student demonstrations in China. The horrors of the Cultural Revolution, which incidentally started 60 years ago this Saturday, are off limits. Even British colonial history in Hong Kong is a touchy subject, best forgotten. Xi expects journalists “to tell China’s story well”. The thoughts of Xi Jinping are studied and institutionalised. Posters of Xi have replaced deities in churches, temples and believers’ homes. As for his political rivals, he’s moved with ruthless precision to take them out. Zhang Youxia was the latest. And does anyone even remember Bo Xilai, still very much in jail? No Chinese leader since Mao Zedong has managed to accomplish such centralised control. Xi has censorship licked. Xi has power licked. And when his brazen ambition was laid bare back in 2018, when he abolished term rules so that he could stay at the top indefinitely and most of us in the world were appalled, Trump praised the move. “He’s now president for life. President for life… I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day,” he gushed. This is all grotesque. This is everything that Index exists to fight against. But this is the language that Trump speaks and this is the model that Trump wants. An economic powerhouse, a global leader, and ultimately a country that makes few concessions to freedoms. For every instance of Xi control listed above, you’ll find a counterpart coming out of the Trump administration. So what’s Trump doing in China? He’ll be talking trade, AI, Iran, fentanyl, sure. Maybe he’ll call for Jimmy Lai’s release, not because he necessarily cares about the imprisoned media mogul and certainly not because he cares about media freedom, but because consider the photo op! Consider the high of getting China’s most prized prisoner out! But I bet too that Trump will be taking note, observing up close the world’s largest and most successful autocracy and admiring the man who sits at the top. READ MORE

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For all of President Donald Trump’s unpredictability, he does have some consistencies, one being his love of a reviled ruler.…

Dangerous Losers

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On April 25, a man armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives charged through a security gate and was apprehended by Secret Service agents before he could…

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