Also we will come after you and find you. U. S. Special forces kill isis top leader in a Nighttime Raid in syria. It raises the question just how strong is isis today . How much of a threat does it pose . Fawaz gerges will join me. Finally, from cars to milk to housing and more, we are paying more than we were a year ago for so many items. Inflation is to blame for certain, but just how bad is it . I will do a deep dive that might surprise you. But first, here is my take. Its a tale of two olympics. Remember the 2008 beijing games . China was dazzling the world with its economic prowess and technological sophistication, determined to impress the world with its soft power. Praise filled the headlines in countries like australia, the United Kingdom and the u. S. The Sydney Morning Herald said that the Opening Ceremony was a perfect ten. Londons Evening Standard described the event as the beginning of chinas new era of greatness, witnessed and implicitly approved by much of the leadership of the planet. Indeed, there was george w. Bush, the First American president to attend an olympics in a foreign country, telling the press that the beijing games exceeded my expectations. Compare that to the beijing Winter Olympics that began last week. Those same countries, the u. S. , the uk and australia, have all announced a diplomatic boycott of the games for human rights concerns. No major western Head Of State is attending. The star of the show is chinas ever closer ally Vladimir Putin. The event itself is taking place without the usual screaming crowds and olympic cheers. Traveling to china is nearly impossible due to the pandemic and the government is barring most ordinary people from attending, all of which means that the stadiums and other venues are essentially tv studios, beaming out sports that are being played in front of near empty arenas. The Covid Situation in china is a metaphor for one of the problems plaguing the country, its governments rigidity. China handled the initial outbreak of covid brutally but they effectively, achieving what in some ways is the worlds most successful pandemic containment strategy. The country has under 5,000 reported covid deaths, compared to americas putting aside the possibility of underreporting the difference is staggering. But as many experts have noted, china now faces a real covid nightmare. Omicron spreads so easily and fast that Pursuing A Zero Covid Policy is like putting a finger in a dike. Chinas vaccines do not appear to be very effective at preventing Breakthrough Omicron infections. Add to this, the fact that according to official reports few of chinas 1. 4 billion people have tested positive for covid, meaning socalled natural or virusinduced immunity is relatively low. Every january the Eurasia Group announces a list of the top ten global risks. This year chinas zero covid policy was the number one risk. There is a broader cost to chinas covid policy, it has cut the country off from the world. For the last two years chinas president and many of its senior officials have not traveled abroad. Few diplomats and businesspeople go to the Middle Kingdom anymore. Tourists have basically been banned. This is a major reversal of decades in which china reached out to the world and tried to integrate itself into global institutions. When they began chinas reforms the phrase that was used to often that it became a mantra was reform and opening. That opening feels like a distant memory now. Today its crack down and close up. In some ways covid highlights a central flaw in the chinese model. Beijing can operate with ruthless efficiency which often makes western democratic policy making seem chaotic and second rate, but when a dictators chosen policy needs to be changed, its very hard for a dictatorship to correct course. The best example of this rigidity is chinas one child policy which gained momentum in the 1980s. A strategy that might have made some sense in the 60s and early 70s when chinese Population Growth was worrying and the economy was faltering, proved count productive from the 1990s by which time demographic vitality would have been an asset, but it took beijing years and years to change. Now it appears efforts to reverse the policys effects may be too late. Democracies for all their flaws can switch policy and policymakers with much greater ease. In washington these days many look enviously at the beijing governments efficiency and its ability to utes state power to generate economic growth. We wonder whether we need more direct Industrial Policy with government picking National Champions and protecting industries with tariffs and subsidies. It might be worth taking a closer look at what is actually going on in china. Beijing has succeeded wildly in some areas, but that same government, those same bureaucracies, have made major mistakes from persisting with the onechild policy to accumulating mountains of debt. The black box that is chinas government often looks more impressive from the outside. Americas openness and competition, economic, political, social, often looks chaotic, but over the centuries it has endured while many seemingly efficient models of government have failed. Go to cnn. Com fareed for a link to my Washington Post column this week. And let us get started. China state News Agency Reports that at fridays meeting between putin and xi in beijing, the two agreed to deepen strategic coordination and they pledged to support each other in safe guarding sovereignty. After the meeting the two nations also released a Joint Statement opposing any further expansion of nato. What to make of it all. Let me bring in todays panel, Gideon Rachman is the fts chief Foreign Affairs columnist. There is a big story in the paper entitled russia and chinas plans for a new world order. He is also the author of an upcoming book age of the strong man. Cindy yu is an editor at the spectator. She hosts the magazines podcasts, chinese whispers. Gideon, welcome. Let me start with you and ask you how did we get to this point . If you go back ten years ago it certainly seemed that the United States was in this kind of almost bismarckian position where it had better relations with russia and china than the two countries had with themselves. What has happened that has gotten up to this russia china axis . Well, i think a couple of things. I think, firstly, both putin and xi have come to the conclusion, possibly a false conclusion, that they are threatened domestically at home by the possibility of what they call Color Revolutions which are referred to explicitly in the russia chinese Joint Statement after their meeting, by which they mean a kind of americansponsored upheaval, attempt to overthrow the regime. And they have this joint interest in a sense in making the world safe for autocracy. Making the world safe for t democracy but i think russia and china have decided they want to make the world safe for their autocratic regimes by pushing back against what they regard as these u. S. Inspired things that they would point to, say, ukraine, the russians believe that america was essentially behind the to overthrow the russian president. The chinese say that the americans were behind the uprising in hong kong. But also i think theres a more Offensive Aspect to it, which is that they have a joint perception that america is also getting weaker, going back to the financial crisis, the problems with the pandemic that you referred to, you know, the storming of the capitol, the fall of afghanistan, you name it. Theres a lot of reasons why they think now is a good time jointly to push back against american power. Cindy, i wonder how much of this, though, has something to do with Western Policy as well. I mean, i cant help but thinking that you had these same issues in the 1970s in a sense with a closely allied russia and china, and the Nixon Administration with Henry Kissinger was able to very deftly separate the two and drive a wedge between them. Is Western Policy in some way driving them together . Yeah, fareed, i think thats right. If you think back to the 70s, that period of time youre talking about, cracks had already been showing between the ussr as it was then and communist china, but what nixon was able to do with the chairman was really formalize that and to spread aside these two communist allies which really brought on the end of the cold war later and china was also able to benefit from that because at that point it didnt really want to be under the soviet unions wings anymore. Right now what the west is doing, but im not sure its got much other option, but what it is doing is pushing russia and china further together. One way we can see this is, for example, through energy. When we are talking about, for example, the russian pipeline into germany or nord stream 2 for natural gas, you know, america and washington has been very clear that this is not a good idea for germany to be reliant on russian gas, yet if germany is not reliant on russian gas that gas is going to be sold to china. Thats what weve seen in the last ten years, that the Chinese Market has become increasingly important to Russian Energy suppliers. So, you know, through, you know, reducing western reliance on russia, what we do is increase russian reliance on china. Gideon, arent these two countries very different in a kind of odd couple, in a way . China is fundamentally a rising power, russia is fundamentally a declining power. The Atlantic Council has a nice interesting report on the two called axis of collusion, the fragile putin xi relationship. It makes a point theres all this rhetoric of partnership but underneath it Chinese Investment in russia is actually declining. The chinese are not trying to help russia, for example, diversify its economy away from the petrol state that it is. Do you think that the west should be exploiting those tensions . Well, i think, you know i think its probably easier said than done. I mean, this idea of doing, if you like, a Reverse Kissinger and perhaps pulling russia away from china because china is now the bigger threat is an idea that does the rounds and think tanks you will have heard it talked about, but its not as simple as that because for the moment these two countries do have shared interests. What is the case, however, is i think that in the long run you clearly can identify divergent interests and actually say china is the rising power, its economy is much, much larger than that of russia, its population is ten times that of russia and even potentially in the future there could be territorial tensions between russia and china. A lot of modern day ruia was once in china, you know, in the 19th century and the russians i think are anxious that all of their energy resources, most of them are in the east, which is very underpopulated, china is very, you know, short of energy. So you could see maybe in a decades time potential tensions between the two countries, but i just dont think thats where were at right now because i think at the moment they currently have a joint perception of an american threat. Stay with us. When we come back im going to ask Cindy About The Beijing Olympics and gideon about whether russia will, in fact, invade ukraine. Winner, seven years in a row. In fact, subaru has won most trusted brand for more consecutive years than any other brand. No wonder Kelley Blue Book also picked subaru as their best overall brand. Once again. Its easy to love a brand you can trust. Its easy to love a subaru. Your Shipping Manager left to find themself. leaving you lost. You need to hire. I need indeed. Indeed you do. Indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job description. Visit indeed. Com hire living with diabetes . Glucerna protein smart has your number with 30 grams of protein. 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Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. Emerge tremfyant® with tremfya®. Ask you doctor about tremfya® today. I looked on ancestry and just started digging and found some really cool stuff. It was just a lot of fun. Just to talk to my parents about it and to send it to my grandparents and be like, hey this person were all related to look at this crazy stuff they did in arizona 100 years ago. It actually gives you a picture of their life, so you get to feel like youre walking the same path they did. We are back with Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times and cindy yu of the spectator. Cindy, you have written a piece thats similar to the some of the points i made in my opening commentary. Let me ask you to expand on it. Where does china go for now . Is there discussion about, you know, dealing with covid somewhat differently because im struck by the fact that other countries that have pursued a tough policy, a kind of zero covid policy like australia, new zealand, taiwan, singapore, theyre beginning to ease up. Theyre recognizing that omicron is going to spread like wildfire no matter what you do. What is going on in china . The government is very, very smart and competent and are they beginning to move in that direction, even in small ways . Well, theres not enough discussion of what comes after zero covid, really, because, you know, whereas in these other countries you have these discussions in Civil Society and Public Opinion about living with covid. Thats not really a sign of that in china. Last summer there was one State Epidemiologist who tried to say, you know, at some stage were going to have to live with covid. What happened instead is that he was subjected to an online witchhunt, they investigated they triggered an investigation into his dissertation, plagiarism inquiry. It was a witch hunt and he has kind of stopped talking about that line of argument now and we dont really see much else. I think china does obviously want to be thinking about its next stages but it was never going to do that this year because in october is National Party congress, which is when president xi was meant to have stepped down, but obviously because he has abolished term limits hes not going to be stepping down anymore. It will be a politically sensitive time to mark his first decade in power. There was no way they were going to risk some kind of Covid Outbreak before that. As ive written, until then the country is using a holding pattern, locking down wherever it seecovid, even one case is too many and easing lockdown when locally transmitted cases are completely gone, which is obviously socially economic damaging but in terms of the absolute results, in terms of the lives and infections it is highly effective. Cindy, let me quickly ask you about something. George soros, the legendary investor and philanthropist, made a speech in which he predicted may be too strong a word but he cautioned that x might not get his third term, that there is rising opposition within china and that if covid goes very badly things could unravel. As far as i can tell that sounds more like Wishful Thinking than careful reading of actual things on the ground. Would you agree . I do not see much potent opposition to xi getting his third term in china. Yeah, i would agree with you, fareed. If george soros can point us to where that opposition is, im sure many people would be very eager to hear about it. There are signs, there are always signs, but chinas opaque. Al system is incredibly no one really knows what happens behind the scenes until decades later when memoirs get written and even thats not common. Its part of president xis political legacy but it doesnt look like its failing. It looks like it will be indefinitely continued as long as president xi is happy to pay the price through the economy. Even with the economy, its still growing. China has not had the economic damage that a lot of other countries in the world have had, either. So i dont really think that president xi will be stepping down this year, no. Gideon, lets switch, if we can, to russia. What do you think . Is this all kind of Coercion Diplomacy designed to get something from the west, or does putin really want to teach ukraine a lesson . Look, i think that the real truth is tha