The liberal financier singled out Xi Jinping as the greatest threat to the ‘open societies’ of the world
Liberal billionaire George Soros called for the replacement of Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, comparing the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.
In a speech delivered at the conservative Hoover Institution, Soros called China the “world’s most powerful authoritarian state” and “the greatest threat that open societies face today.”
Soros claimed that China, “like Germany in 1936,” will “attempt to use the spectacle” of the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games “to score a propaganda victory for its system of strict controls.”
China’s Xi Jinping is the greatest threat that open societies face today. The country’s roiling real estate market, falling population, and fast-spreading omicron variant might be his undoing, all during his prestige project of the Winter Olympics. https://t.co/1Pf0XEy29M pic.twitter.com/WMyWpPKg0y
— George Soros (@georgesoros) January 31, 2022
He also called Xi “a true believer in communism” unlike former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who introduced free market reforms, and warned that “Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin are his idols.”
Soros concluded his speech with a call for regime change in China – echoing the current line of many American conservatives, who also oppose Xi’s leadership.