General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party is as known a quantity as is possible for a totalitarian dictator to be known.
Xi is the absolute ruler of the second most powerful nation state in the world. As the dictator-for-life of the nearest nation to the United States in terms of economic and military power, Xi has repeatedly demonstrated in ways large and small that his control of everything and everyone in the Peoples Republic of China is complete.
When he sits down opposite of President in the days ahead, Xi will be facing the only person on the planet with more power at his disposal than Xi himself wields, and will do so with the knowledge that President Trumps time in that position is limited to less than three years while Xis is limited only by his own lifespan.
It is highly likely that a less formidable opponent to Xi will take over the United States government in January, 2029. So why would Xi do anything at all next week that would signal anything other than stubborn strength during or after the upcoming summit?
There are at least two considerations that might yield some significant flexibility on Xis part.
First, if Xi cares at all about reducing the enduring global awareness of his ruthlessness, he could release prisoners of significance in the worlds opinion like , once a powerful media tycoon in a free Hong Kong. Lais imprisonment has served to underscore Xis crushing of dissent, his cruelty, and his thoroughness in communicating that message to his own population even at the cost of anchoring the deeply negative perception of him in all of the free world and in history.
Xis indifference to that perception is obvious as his demonstrated. But perhaps there is a small chance that the Leninist who is almost certainly an atheist may not care about eternity and its judgments but if there is even a small bit of concern on his part about historys or a deitys assessment of him, that would be an incentive to use this biggest of stages to lay down a marker on being other than absolutely evil.
Jimmy Lai is far from the only high profile political prisoner in Xis country-wide cell. is another and there are scores more. The release of the publisher or the pastor and any of the scores known by name would oblige historians to account for even a small flicker of humanity in the dictator. Does Xi care about that? Or has he reached a Putin-level of indifference to basic human norms?
Second, if Xi for any reason wants to provide President Trump with a visible and enduring achievement, he will send Lai and others into exile from China via Air Force One. There is a long list of “asks” that Xi could request of Trump, and the president and his advisors would have to assess the cost of any concessions against the benefit of an extraordinary victory for endurance â if only in the West. President Trump should value a release of symbols of universal human rights very highly. There is great value as well in Xis rejection of the request for Lai and others. An accurate assessment of our greatest adversary is pieced together from refusals on such small matters as the fate of one man.
Such occasions as the freeing of a political dissident are of far more significance within free societies than they are of consequence in totalitarian ones. The populations in countries without freedom may become aware of an act of mercy eventually, but it will hardly matter in the course of their countrys evolution. Political earthquakes are not triggered by acts of mercy.
But reassessments of rulers are influenced by such steps. Hitler had Bonhoeffer executed. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was released from his internal exile in 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Leonid Brezhnev exiled the genius to the West. Mikhail Gorbachev freed Natan Sharansky.
remembers.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “<a href="https://hughhewitt.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofo
