In human history not a single dictatorial leader has been content to remain in place. Without exception such leaders are hellbent on becoming even more completely controlling than they already are.
No need though to go back in time. We see it now. Each of us is eyewitness to this inevitable trajectory.
Since protests in Russia in 2011 and 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin gradually clamped down on his opponents. Moreover, ahead of today’s parliamentary elections the pace of his crushing his critics accelerated. For months, Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, has been behind bars. And the others of Putin’s opposition have faced unprecedented persecution – unprecedented at least for many decades.
Like Russia and before it the Soviet Union, China has no experience with liberal democracy. Additionally, both have had extensive experience with Communist Parties, which have been without exception strongly centralized. Like Russia China, then, provides rich soil for dictators determined to become more dictatorial.
In recent months hardly a week has gone by, hardly a day has gone by, without news of yet another sort of clampdown by Chinese President – and General Secretary of the Communist Party, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission – Xi Jinping. In no uncertain terms he has demonstrated his lust for power. His determination to become totalitarian. As totalitarian a Chinese leader as any since Mao Zedong.
By now no aspect of Chinese society has been left untouched by Xi and his Chinese Communist Party. Not politics, not business, not the military, not technology, not territory, not art or culture. Xi’s fingerprints are virtually everywhere – his increasingly iron grip is on virtually everyone.
I could go on. But the point of this piece is just that left unchecked bad leadership persists. And that, step by step by step, in time it gets worse.