With Xi And Putin, Ignore What Xi Says. Instead, Watch What Chinese Business DOES

Vietnam got it right the first time. Ideologically, it took China longer, but they got it right too. When the communist party took over the rest of Vietnam, they almost immediately realized something. They realized that while communism might be a kicky political idea for people to follow and fight for, as an economic deliver, it sucks large.

Here’s why. In a pure communist rule, there is no private industry allowed. The government runs everything, and distributes the benefits, allegedly equally. But here’s the rub. Having the government run every business is like letting your podiatrist perform your heart transplant. Governments don’t know jack shit about running a profitable business, that’s why governments always run a fucking deficit!

North Korea and Cuba never twigged to that fact. But Vietnam and China did. While keeping upper control, they introduced a healthy dollop of good old fashioned capitalism into their economic systems. And they both have thriving national economies. Besides, people work harder when they share in the spoils. Fun Fact from a guy who worked online fraud prevention for 9 years. In terms of annual global online fraud, Ghana,Vietnam,and Russia are the gold, silver, and bronze medal winners. And China is climbing the ladder. Now that’s capitalism for ya!

Here’s why this is so important, and so topical right now. In order to run successfully, while a communist government may “control” an industry, they still have to give the actual managers the autonomy to run the business efficiently and profitably. Normally everything runs smoothly, but occasionally an event occurs that brings the two sides into friction.

Like now. Everybody is losing their lunch, and running in circles over how Far Chinese President Xi Jinping is willing to go in his friendly relationship with war criminal Vladimir Putin. Xi has had friendly, supportive words for Putin, and hinted at possible support. China is running a propaganda campaign aimed at making Putin and Russia look like innocent victims of a vile US/western European plot. And almost alone globally, China has yet to impose any sanctions on Russia, and is unlikely to do so.

SO that’s Xi, and what he says. He’s walking a very fine tightrope between supporting Putin, yet not taking an overt step that leads to and international sanction and trade tariffs against China. But that’s still just Xi speaking for himself and the Chinese government. More importantly, what are Chinese businesses and industries doing when it comes to Russia?

Nothing good for Russia. There was a report on MSNBC yesterday with an expert who showed that since the onset of international sanctions against Russia, Chinese business and trade activity with Russia has fallen off of a cliff. Xi may be loyal, but Chinese executives, just like most other executives worldwide, have fiduciary responsibilities. And left to their own devices, they have no intention of doing something that could lead to sanctions or tariffs, or even worse, a global boycott of their goods and products.

This puts Xi on the spot. He can continue to be publicly supportive of Putin, but nothing more. And his friendly words won’t get the goods and products flowing back into the Russian economy again, and Russia needs that now more than ever. But if Xi inserts himself, and orders the companies to resume normal relations with Russia, he could trigger a chain of events that sends his economy spinning into a recession. The last thing he needs after the economic upheaval of a two year global pandemic he unleashed.

It’s Rachel’s mantra, Don’t watch what they say, watch what they do. Xi will continue to make moo-moo noises of support for Putin. Ignore his dumpy ass. A quick Google search should give you a picture of actual, on the ground business and trade between Russia and China. Xi will lie, but the numbers won’t.