The final communique of last weekend’s G-7 summit in Japan left no doubt that the West views Russia as not only a malign global player but an enemy, and considers China to be not just a competitor but a rival and potentially a threat. That is the position among the governments and leaders of the world’s richest democracies. But what about the world’s population at large?
For years, China and, to a lesser extent, Russia have been courting global opinion. Lambasting U.S. dominance, they have called for a multipolar world and worked to make one a reality. And they have decried liberal democracy as a whole and U.S. democracy in particular.
How effective has the global public relations push by the world’s two leading autocracies proved until now?