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2022 showed Xi Jinping is not invincible; 2023 will be "rocky year" for him
What a year 2022 has been for Xi Jinping.
On the one hand, China's leader made clear he's the big boss after the 20th Communist Party Congress. On the other, he's been forced to roll back his zero-COVID policy following protests and the damage to the economy.
What will 2023 hold for Xi?
“It will be a rocky year for China,” former US State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World. Moving away from lockdowns was long overdue, but the big problem now is that a large part of the elderly population is unvaccinated.
And it's very striking, she adds, that Xi had to reverse course when he realized he couldn't stop the protests.
For international relations expert Tom Nichols, the experience humbled Xi, whose "regime has been cut down to size." China, he points out, is no longer 10 feet tall like in the early days of COVID but just another government facing the same problems they all did during the pandemic.
Watch the GZERO World episode: On Russia’s reckoning, China’s vulnerability & US democracy’s Dunkirk
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2022: The trouble with autocrats
The three big international politics stories of this year – Russia’s war on Ukraine, the uprisings in Iran, and China’s bid to lockdown COVID – have something basic in common: All are the result of authoritarian leaders who’ve painted themselves into dangerous corners, and they all sit atop political systems that make these kinds of crises inevitable.
Putin’s war
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has isolated himself from dissenting voices in his country and within his government, and it appears that many senior state officials and military leaders were surprised when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine last February.
Then, Putin himself was surprised to learn that billions supposedly invested in military modernization in recent years had been stolen or wasted, leaving his armed forces entirely unfit for purpose.
And because the Russian state sharply restricts the flow of accurate information within the country and criminalizes dissent, anxious Russians are now prey to every new rumor of a pending mobilization that might send more young Russians into a military meat grinder.
The result: The lack of accurate information flowing up or down the Russian system allowed Putin to start a war he can’t finish – with resulting damage to Russia’s economy, military, and political standing that will last for decades. Yet, the world pays a heavy price with the loss of Ukrainian and Russian lives, with higher energy and food prices triggered by the war, and with money and resources devoted to the conflict that might have been invested in human potential.
Iran’s insurrection
Since the in-custody death of a young woman arrested by the Islamic Republic’s morality policefor wearing her headscarf improperly, nationwide anti-regime protests have spread. Iran’s clerical establishment, led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has responded to the protests mainly with brutal repression, including public executions.
Here’s a government that bases its right to rule on a revolution that an increasingly small minority of Iranians are old enough to remember. It’s a regime isolated from its own people, threatened by public dissent, and unwilling to offer citizens more than token concessions. The public unrest continues.
Xi’s lockdown
China’s Xi Jinping, who has amassed more personal power within China than any leader in half a century, insists the Chinese Communist Party has helped his country avoid the COVID carnage suffered in Western democracies. To do this, the state has sharply restricted the movement of hundreds of millions of people, compromised their privacy, and forced them into constant testing and sometimes quarantine. China’s economy has taken a severe hit, but far fewer people have died in China than have succumbed to COVID in America and Europe.
But the lockdown could never be sustained indefinitely, and it has now been abruptly relaxed – without a clear plan to manage the deadly fallout. Because Xi insists on the superiority of the Chinese system, his government remains unwilling to accept mRNA vaccines developed in the West that might better protect China’s people now that the lockdown policy has become unsustainable and the virus is suddenly freer to travel.
And because Xi’s power is built atop a perception of infallibility – “Xi Jinping thought” is now enshrined as a guiding principle in China’s constitution – it’s been impossible for the state to acknowledge the error and to reverse course in ways that limit post-lockdown damage from the virus.
Finally, as in Russia, tight state control of information creates fertile ground for dangerous rumormongering within China and undermines the Chinese government’s credibility abroad.
Looking ahead
The history of the world shows us that democratic governments are certainly capable of dumb decisions that inflict terrible harm on others, but 2022 reminds us that when dictatorships create crises, they tend to be much harder to resolve.
In Russia, Iran, and China, there is no credible opposition capable of calling these leaders to account, in some cases saving them and their people from their own bad decisions. In none of them is there a free press capable of giving leaders an accurate picture of conditions inside their country or even within their governments. There are no independent voices to provide accurate information to help citizens navigate a crisis. There are no checks in place to prevent these governments from making matters worse.
In 2023, unable to win his war or admit he’s made a mistake, Putin will make matters worse for Russia, Ukraine, and the entire global economy by continuing the conflict.
As an aging Supreme Leader brings Iran closer to a potentially dangerous political transition, Iran may face even bigger disruptions ahead.
Because there was never a credible exit strategy from Xi’s zero-COVID policy, the virus will probably infect large numbers of Chinese citizens, mutate an untold number of times, produce new variants, and then cross borders. Chinese hospitals, the global economy, and everyone infected with these variants, inside and outside China, will pay the price.
The combination of near-absolute power, demand for near-perfect political control, and the distortion of open information that goes with them will be with us through the new year and beyond.
Ukraine taking the battle to Russia
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
What should we expect from Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia?
A lot more investment. The Chinese expect themselves to be one of the last men standing in terms of global energy demand for fossil fuels. The Saudis, of course, the cheapest major producers out there, think in the transition they'll be the last man standing in terms of supply, and that really aligns these countries much more than with the United States over the medium- to long-term. I'm also really interested in any conversations about security because behind the scenes, the Chinese have been talking to a lot of countries about where they might put their first military base in the Middle East. The whisper is Oman. Something to watch out for going forward.
And sticking with China, what might the relaxation of its zero COVID policy look like?
Well, I mean, incremental until we start to see much larger numbers of the Chinese elderly getting vaccinated. Those numbers are way too low for the over 80-year-old crowd, but it's close to a mandate what the Chinese are planning on finally implementing by the end of January. Until then, I think it's going to be more willingness to allow people to have more targeted quarantines and lockdowns for shorter periods of time, more flexibility, and more people are allowed to travel, how people are allowed to live on a day-to-day basis, but still plenty of popular anger about the fact that their lives are becoming inconvenienced dramatically by all of these lockdowns and slowdowns. And, of course, supply chain impact on Chinese economic growth.
Is Ukraine taking the battle to Russia?
Yeah, we saw that with Kerch Bridge and the ability of the Russians to link directly to Crimea. Now, we see it with three different Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian bases, one of which deep in Russian territory, not so far from Moscow. That really does show a growing Ukrainian military capabilities with all the support from NATO going forward. From Russia's perspective, it justifies Russian attacks against Ukrainian critical infrastructure. It's not a game changer at this point, but it certainly shows that the impact that this war is having on both sides, Russian economic impact long-term, Ukrainian civil and human impact long-term, is growing, and growing, and growing.
Inflation, war, climate headline at UN General Assembly
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
As high-level week at UNGA gets underway, that's United Nations General Assembly, what is top of mind for visiting world leaders?
I don't know. How about war on the ground in Europe? How about massive inflation happening in food prices and energy prices around the world? How about how the Europeans get through a very cold winter and what happens as a consequence of that when they don't have enough energy, and prices are like two, three, four, five times what they were last year? How about climate change ongoing and still becoming a bigger and bigger problem every year? Lots to talk about at UNGA, depends on who you talk to though. Depends on who you talk to.
Is Putin looking to end the war in Ukraine as President Erdogan of Turkey suggests.
It's interesting. I was with the president of Kazakhstan yesterday, President Tokayev, and he also suggested that in his meeting with Putin, the fact that Putin said that he was interested in talking to Zelensky and opening negotiations without preconditions, which he certainly wasn't saying before, struck him as significant. Look, who knows at the end of the day if Putin would be willing to start talks. But what is very clear is that Putin's willingness to accept an outcome of the war is nowhere close to what would be remotely acceptable to Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. Putin is not going willing to give up the territory that they have captured since February 24th. And the Ukrainians believe that by fighting, they can potentially take it back. So I don't think we are anywhere close to an end to the fighting in Ukraine, over Ukraine, and more broadly between Russia and NATO.
President Biden says "the pandemic is over". Is it?
Well, I mean, it feels over in the United States, though a lot of people are still dying of COVID. But of course, a lot of people die of a lot of things in the United States. I will say that in China, the pandemic is most definitively not over and that's because most of the Chinese had never gotten COVID. A disturbing number of elderly Chinese still haven't gotten vaccines. The vaccines they have aren't very effective and as a consequence, that's one of the biggest things that's driving all these lockdowns, rolling lockdowns, driving significant problems on the ground. I'm not going to China. You're not going to China. Why not? Because there's still a pandemic. Clearly, Biden didn't care about that when he was asked the question, but that wasn't what he was talking about. He was talking about the US. He looked around, think it was an auto show or something, and said nobody's wearing mask. Pandemic must be over. Hey, that means the pandemic has been over in Florida for like two years. Awesome. I don't know. We'll see what you say about that. Talk to you soon.
Hard Numbers: Global chips glut, DRC border jam, Amazon deforestation
35: Remember last year's big semiconductor shortage? It's over. High inflation, China's zero-COVID policy, and Russia's war in Ukraine have slashed global demand for chips, with the benchmark Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropping 35% in 2022.
60: The Democratic Republic of Congo will expand its main border post with Zambia to ease congestion. Trucks loaded with precious minerals like copper are often stuck in lines up to 60 km (37.3 miles) long.
Hard Numbers: Zero-COVID censorship, Russian default, NATO’s rapid reaction, Indian political shenanigans
5:Zero-COVID in China until 2027? A senior Communist Party official, in a notice published on Monday, said the policy would remain in place for the next five years. He probably didn’t run his statement by Xi Jinping, since Chinese censors immediately scrubbed it from news sites and social media.
100 million: About $100 million worth of interest on Russian government bonds was unpaid after the grace expired on Sunday night, marking the first technical default on its sovereign debt since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918. Still, the effect on the economy will be limited by the reality that Western sanctions have already made it extremely hard for Russia to borrow money anyway.
300,000: NATO plans to beef up its high-readiness forces to over 300,000 troops to counter big threats like Russia. The alliance’s leaders are gathering this week in Madrid for their first summit since the war in Ukraine began.
40: Maharashtra — India's richest state and home to Mumbai — is now effectively run by ... no one. Most of the cabinet is now in a hotel thousands of miles away in Assam state, talking to 40 rebel lawmakers from the “ruling” Shiv Shena party holed up there to demand the chief minister step down. They're rumored to be seeking to jump ship and form an alliance with their Hindu nationalist pals from PM Narendra Modi's BJP party.
COVID zeroes in on Xi Jinping
The Chinese president thinks his zero-COVID policy can stamp out the disease entirely until a rude awakening changes everything.
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British PM Boris Johnson looking puzzled.
What We're Watching: Confidence in Boris, Shanghai reopens, chicken inflation
The Boris vote is coming
Following last week’s Gray report, findings from an investigation into allegations that Boris Johnson attended lockdown-violating social events during the pandemic, it seemed that the UK prime minister might avoid a vote of no-confidence in his leadership of the Conservative Party. But a clumsy response — Johnson claims the report “vindicated” him — and resulting criticism this week from members of his party suggest the vote is coming, perhaps as soon as next week. Here are the basics: It would take a formal request from 54 Tory MPs to force a vote and a simple majority of 180 Tories to oust him. For now, it appears the vote would be close. A narrow victory would leave him a diminished figure, but he could survive in power until a national election in 2024. A loss would create a wide-open, two-month contest to lead the party forward. The vote may wait until after a pair of crucial parliamentary by-elections on June 23. A loss for Conservatives in both those votes might seal Johnson’s fate.
Shanghai’s slow reopening
After a grueling two-month lockdown, 90% of Shanghai’s residents (some 22 million people) are finally allowed to move around the city somewhat freely. Residents of low-risk housing complexes — meaning no COVID cases have been identified for 14 days — no longer need to seek government permission to leave their homes, while many shops also began to reopen. Still, this should not be taken as a sign that Beijing is easing its commitment to a zero-COVID policy. Harsh containment measures are still being enforced, including in Beijing, where 5,000 people were forced into a quarantine facility this week after one man broke lockdown rules before testing positive. While photos show Shanghainese rejoicing at their newfound freedom, many are struggling to readjust, feeling traumatized after a 65-day lockdown in which the government often failed to provide them with enough food and medication. While China’s ruling Communist Party is keen to see the country’s economic hub resume activities hastily in order to reverse a trend of negative national growth, the city isn’t going back to normal just yet: most children will not resume face-to-face schooling for the foreseeable future, and significant restrictions remain for those seeking to leave the city.
Malaysian chicken export ban ruffles Singapore’s feathers
The effects of the global food crisis exacerbated by Russia's war in Ukraine have mainly hit poor countries, but now rich ones are also feeling the pinch. On Wednesday, Malaysia suspended all poultry exports due to an acute shortage of feed that has sent local prices through the roof. The ban has caused mass anxiety in next-door neighbor Singapore, where foodies are panicking it might spoil the taste of the country’s de-facto national dish: delicious Hainanese chicken rice (featured, of course, in the popular film Crazy Rich Asians). While we sympathize with Singaporeans having to replace Malaysian live birds with Brazilian frozen ones, there's a more troubling dynamic at play. Chicken feed is primarily made up of grains like corn and soybeans, which had already become more expensive by early 2022 due to supply chain disruptions, climate change, and higher energy costs but have now seen prices skyrocket after Russia’s invasion. What's more, since feed is by far the biggest input cost of poultry, chicken could soon become more expensive than beef in the UK. Time to go vegan?