Russia and China: Beacons of Illiberal Idealogy

Please join us for a talk with Charles Clover, journalist at the Financial Times.

Russia and China increasingly seek to export ideological alternatives to liberalism as they seek to assert themselves globally. Russia has been showcasing its muscular conservatism and support for far right parties in Europe and the U.S. in a way that has won converts in many countries. Meanwhile China last year announced that it views its version of socialism as a model for other countries to adopt—a declaration that signals the end of three decades of ideological caution and moderate foreign policy. The Russian and Chinese projects have little in common other than being alternatives to western liberalism, which has seen a quarter century as the dominant global idea, and they signal that a new era of geopolitical competition with an ideological element is at hand.

Charles Clover has been a journalist with the Financial Times since 1997, working most recently in Beijing. From 2008-2013 he was bureau chief in Moscow and won the 2011 British Press Award Foreign Reporter of the year award, and the Martha Gellhorn Special Award the same year for reporting on the rise of Russian nationalism.