‘China views the UK as weaker after Brexit’ | New Statesman

When the then-Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd met Xi Jinping in June 2010, they discussed contemporary Chinese history over an open fire late into the evening. Rudd was struck by Xi’s expertise, and believes this intellectual grounding sets him apart from his recent predecessors. Speaking to me recently from Brisbane, Rudd, 64, said there were two types of political leaders: pragmatic journeymen, and those who seek to engineer era-defining change. From those early meetings with the then vice-president of China, Rudd knew Xi saw himself as the latter: a “man of history and a man of destiny”.

Read more at the New Statesman