A hot mic catches Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping chatting about living, and presumably ruling, for decades to come.
Earlier today, from atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping presided over a 70-minute parade to mark the end of World War II, flanked by two other menaces to peace and stability, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. It was basically a board of directors meeting for the Axis of the Devils.
Perhaps most intriguingly, there are reports online that a hot mic picked up a snippet of conversation between Putin and Xi at the parade. The exchange, translated:
Xi: “People rarely lived past 70 before. Now at 70 you’re still a child.”
Putin: “With biotech, organs can be replaced endlessly… people could even reach immortality.”
Xi: “Some predict people might live to 150 this century.”
Putin will turn 73 next month; for years, Russia-watchers have speculated that the Russian dictator has one or more secret health problems. Sadly, as of this writing, Putin’s heart is still beating, to the extent it can be confirmed to exist. Xi turned 72 in June.
Either this is what passes for small talk among some of the world’s most malevolent and powerful men, or these guys intend to be around for a long, long time – long after the end of the Trump administration, and perhaps any future Vance or other administrations.
There is no prospect of a change in leadership in China in the coming years, unless Xi faced some sort of unexpected health issue.
And as Harvard historian Arunabh Ghosh explored in a 2018 essay, “What Does Longevity Mean for Leadership in China?”, Xi Jinping may well be around for a very long time. “For China’s top leadership born from the 1880s to the 1930s, average longevity is in the mid-to-high 80s… Nearly one in five Chinese leaders has lived beyond 90. In comparison, only about one-in-seven leaders in the United States, one-in-nine in India, and one-in-ten for the USSR has lived past 90. Chinese leaders do indeed live longer lives than their counterparts in the United States, India, and the former Soviet Union.”
Ghosh contends that the data reveals national leaders “live longer in the one country where it matters that they live longer… General ideological preferences and policy commitments can therefore persist for a lot longer than elsewhere… In the absence of several strong leaders at the top, the persistence of one faction backed by one long-lived leader can effectively stymie debate and discussion at the highest levels of the state.”
Xi Jinping just turned 68. He is likely to still be in power five years from now, in the year 2026, and at age 78, in the year 2031. If he remains healthy – and it seems safe to assume that Xi will have access to the very best health care on earth, including cutting-edge and experimental treatments, for the rest of his days — he may well be running China well into the 2030s. The global ambitions, belligerent nationalism, and confrontational rhetoric of Xi aren’t going anywhere for a long while. American policymakers should approach this foreign policy challenge accordingly.
Xi and Putin have some major differences. But they both see themselves as leaders of unjustly-maligned once-great empires that are destined to return to global supremacy. I understand why certain Americans love the idea of re-running the Nixon playbook and splitting the two, turning China against Russia, or vice versa. If it could ever work, great. But in the end, that’s unlikely to ever work consistently because Putin and Xi see the world too similarly: might makes right, the strong dominate the weak, and U.S. allies like Taiwan and Ukraine and perhaps other countries of Asia and Europe had better just get used to it and start bowing and scraping.
In the end, they’re bullies. And you don’t have to sign on to every detail of the hawkish, interventionist, or so-called “neocon” foreign policy worldview to not like bullies, and think America’s policies ought to help others stand up for themselves against the world’s bullies.
Both Putin and Xi see the United States of America as a decadent, weak, internally-conflicted former superpower that is . Of course, they’re eager to help our decline accelerate with their own propaganda, foreign influence operations, and gray zone warfare.
They’re not going to be won over by student visas or fancy summits.