Why ‘macho’ Putin has the lead over Xi when it comes to American minds

Perhaps you’re not going to believe this. The fact is that if a poll were taken of American public opinion about Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping (習近平), Putin would get the higher recognition rating, and easily.

Two cheers for Putin? In part, credit Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. With odd consistency in a campaign otherwise peppy with inconsistency, the garrulous New York real estate mogul has been peddling the notion of Russia’s autocratic president as a great leader, inspiring some Republican Americans to whine (utterly without irony) that President Barack Obama is no Putin.

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And what a lovely thing that is! “Few leaders have caused more suffering and conflict today than Vladimir Putin. It shows just how far down the rabbit hole some Trump fans will go to defend their guy,” sighed one dispirited Republican national security expert. “It’s a national case of Stockholm syndrome, one that makes decent Americans turn their backs on values and traditions that they’ve held dear for their entire lives.”

Against Putin, Xi lies second, not because he is not as “strong” a leader (he is undoubtedly the more formidable, more steeped in the complexities of Chinese civilisation); but because he is not as readily categorisable or as identifiable. At a seminar with China Daily journalists in Beijing, I once asked if most Chinese citizens could summon up the name of the US president; and they looked at me as if I were nuts – of course they could! I then asked if they could guess the percentage of Americans that could name their leader. A guess came in at “50 per cent?” I tried not to laugh: “Sorry, it would be less than 10 per cent.” The journalists gasped in dismay, and, as an American, I was embarrassed.

Blame our national ignorance entirely on our news media – why not? Almost everyone, from academics to taxi drivers, makes it the go-to culprit for almost everything. But there are deeper reasons why hardly anyone in America knows Xi, and we might as well start with this: if China’s obviously talented president does care a great deal about his international image, he might try harder to soften it.

He is certainly no baby-kisser like former premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), or self-effacing press conference jokester like, say, Wen’s predecessor Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基). In all fairness, Xi is obviously no faceless bureaucrat putting in time to retirement; and in conversations with Chinese officials, I hear only praise for his bold strikes against corruption. But in America there is doubt – doubt as to whether his campaign aims to destroy, impartially, only the corrupt.

One expert’s view: “Within China, President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has targeted previously untouchable members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee, though it remains unclear whether the campaign is motivated by a desire to truly root out corruption or to weaken Xi’s political opponents.” That assessment comes from Kurt Campbell, a famous US diplomat, in his valuable book, The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia.