SouthernWorldwide.com – As General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping is as well-known a figure as any totalitarian dictator can be.
Xi reigns as the absolute leader of the world’s second-most powerful nation. As the dictator-for-life of the country closest to the United States in economic and military might, Xi has repeatedly shown, in both grand and subtle ways, that his control over everything and everyone in the People’s Republic of China is absolute.
When he sits down with President Donald Trump in the coming days, Xi will face the only person on Earth with more power at their disposal than he wields. He will do so knowing that President Trump’s tenure in that office is limited to less than three years, while Xi’s is limited only by his own lifespan.
It is highly probable that a less formidable opponent to Xi will assume leadership of the United States government in January 2029. Therefore, why would Xi do anything next week that would signal anything other than unyielding strength during or after the upcoming summit?
There are at least two factors that could lead to significant flexibility on Xi’s part.
Firstly, if Xi has any concern about reducing the lasting global awareness of his ruthlessness, he could release globally significant prisoners like Jimmy Lai, once a powerful media tycoon in a free Hong Kong.
Lai’s imprisonment has served to highlight Xi’s suppression of dissent, his cruelty, and his thoroughness in conveying that message to his own population, even at the cost of cementing a deeply negative perception of himself throughout the free world and in history.
Xi’s apparent indifference to such perceptions is evident, as demonstrated by his treatment of the Uyghurs. However, there is a slim possibility that the atheist Leninist might not care about eternity and its judgments.
But if he harbors even a slight concern about history’s or a deity’s assessment of him, this would provide an incentive to use this prominent stage to establish a reputation as something other than purely evil.
Jimmy Lai is far from the only high-profile political prisoner in China’s vast network of jails. Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri is another, and there are scores more.
The release of the publisher, the pastor, or any of the many known by name would compel historians to acknowledge even a small flicker of humanity in the dictator.
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Does Xi care about this? Or has he reached a level of indifference to basic human norms akin to Putin?
Secondly, if Xi, for any reason, wishes to grant President Trump a visible and lasting achievement, he would arrange for Lai and others to be exiled from China via Air Force One.
There is a long list of potential “asks” that Xi could present to Trump, and the president and his advisors would need to weigh the cost of any concessions against the benefit of an extraordinary victory for endurance, at least in the West.
President Trump should highly value the release of symbols of universal human rights. Conversely, Xi’s rejection of the request for Lai and others also holds significant value.
An accurate assessment of our greatest adversary is pieced together from refusals on seemingly minor matters, such as the fate of one individual.
Occasions like the freeing of a political dissident hold far more significance within free societies than they do within totalitarian ones.
The populations in countries lacking freedom may eventually become aware of an act of mercy, but it will hardly matter in the course of their nation’s evolution. Political earthquakes are not triggered by acts of mercy.
However, reassessments of rulers are influenced by such actions. 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.
History remembers.
