What's Xi Jinping really thinking? Ask Kevin Rudd, ex-PM of Australia and fluent Mandarin speaker | The Telegraph

By Christopher Harding

An ageing dictator, looking to his legacy, pushes the button on a long-planned invasion of a smaller neighbour. The fiction of an “international community” is quickly exposed: some countries barely bat an eyelid, preferring the economic rewards of a close relationship; others fear that anything beyond sanctions and stern words risks escalation – the story that this dictator has spent years telling his people, about their destiny and about himself, makes this conflict existential. This is Vladimir Putin and Ukraine in 2022. Could it be Xi Jinping and Taiwan a few years hence?

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