{"id":57516,"date":"2023-08-13T14:00:37","date_gmt":"2023-08-13T05:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2023\/aug\/13\/putin-and-xi-are-the-laurel-and-hardy-of-statesmen-but-its-no-laughing-matter"},"modified":"2023-08-13T14:00:37","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T05:00:37","slug":"putin-and-xi-are-the-laurel-and-hardy-of-statesmen-but-its-no-laughing-matter-simon-tisdall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=57516","title":{"rendered":"Putin and Xi are the Laurel and Hardy of statesmen \u2013 but it\u2019s no laughing matter | Simon Tisdall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>China\u2019s paramount leader, like his Russian counterpart, is making a fine mess of his country\u2019s economy and world standing<\/p>\n<p>It must be tough, being a dictator, when your diktats are ignored, thwarted and scorned. Vladimir Putin is a sad case in point. He ordered the glorious reintegration of Ukraine into his imaginary Russian empire. What he got was an existential crisis that he couldn\u2019t control.<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, is another paramount leader with dictatorship issues. Xi presumes to exercise supreme control, channelling Mao Zedong like a card-carrying Communist party Zeus \u2013 yet repeatedly messes up. Xi\u2019s signature tune could be the chorus to Moby\u2019s Extreme Ways: \u201cThen it fell apart &#8230; Like it always does.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2023\/aug\/13\/putin-and-xi-are-the-laurel-and-hardy-of-statesmen-but-its-no-laughing-matter\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China\u2019s paramount leader, like his Russian counterpart, is making a fine mess of his country\u2019s economy and world standingIt must be tough, being a dictator, when your diktats are ignored, thwarted and scorned. Vladimir Putin is a sad case in point. He &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,53,939,419,474,818,42,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-human-rights","category-joe-biden","category-russia","category-surveillance","category-vladimir-putin","category-world-news","category-xi-jinping"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57517,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57516\/revisions\/57517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}