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This week, for those willing to perceive reality objectively, displayed two kinds of world order. The heartening news is that one will prevail over the other and thereby produce a better world for humanity, one of dignity and development for the common good.

It was a momentous occasion this week when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited China where he was warmly greeted by Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Both leaders affirmed their friendship and their vision of a multipolar world based on partnership and mutual benefit. Putin and Xi signed numerous agreements on a wide range of trade and development projects covering energy, technology, engineering, construction, agriculture, infrastructure and military defense.

The visit was Putin’s second to China since October last year. It was his first foreign trip since he was inaugurated earlier this month as president for a fifth term. Both leaders have established a tradition of visiting each other’s countries as a first international stop upon their respective inaugurations. On beginning his third time as China’s president in 2023, Xi made Russia his first international destination. Over the past two decades, both men have met as leaders on at least 40 occasions.

The personal warmth attests to genuine friendship and also a closely shared political vision of the world. Putin and Xi have ardently advocated for a multipolar world based on respect, equality and cooperation.

During his reception in Beijing this week on a two-day visit, Putin and Xi hailed their nations’ growing alliance as a fundamental factor in maintaining world stability and peace.

Putin stated: “We work in solidarity on forming a more just and democratic multipolar world order which should rely on the central role of the United Nations and its Security Council, international law and the cultural and civilizational diversity, a verified balance of interests of all participants of the world community.”

For his part, Xi remarked that Russia-China ties have “set a model of mutual respect, frankness, harmony and mutual benefit,” and he emphasized their commitment to “fairness and justice”.

Both men underscored that their alliance and vision did not seek to threaten anyone. They appealed for diplomacy and reasonable dialogue in settling international conflicts, including in Ukraine and the Middle East.

President Xi did not mention specific nations but it was patent that he was referring to the United States when he denounced “Cold War mentality…unilateralism, hegemonism, bloc confrontation and power politics” as threats to peace and international security.

By contrast, from two world statesmen representing progressive humanism, we may turn to the other kind of world on display this week, the one that Xi alluded to with his denunciation of Cold War mentality.

The second vision is anachronistic, abject, and failing. It is the world order that dominated since the Second World War based on Western hegemony, or more euphemistically, called the “rules-based order”. The lead hegemon is the United States whose Western allies are vassals to service its order of privilege and exploitation of others in a neocolonial paradigm.

Today, this Western-dictated order is a hyper-militarized disorder where illegal wars and clandestine conflicts are fomented to shore up hegemonic suzerainty and parasitism. As in antiquated times, the majority are treated like slaves who must pay tribute to their overlords or be put to the sword. Today, the tribute system is manifested by trade exploitation, unfair terms of exchange, and financial predation from the abuse of fiat currency, the U.S. dollar. There is no partnership or mutualism in such an “order” because the entire system is predicated on privilege and exploitation, underpinned by fascist notions of superiority and exceptionalism.

U.S. President Joe Biden and virtually all Western political leaders have nothing to offer the world except war, conflict, poverty, and deprivation. This week, Biden and Western vassals continue to weaponize and aid and abet the genocide in Gaza by the criminal Israeli regime; they continue to fuel the war and destruction in Ukraine spurning any genuine pursuit of peaceful diplomacy.

Only days before Putin arrived in Beijing, Chinese President Xi took a European official trip where he met France’s Emmanuel Macron, followed by Hungary’s Viktor Orban. During Xi’s European visit, Biden announced a raft of anti-China economic measures including new tariffs on $18 billion worth of Chinese exports. That’s on top of the tariffs already imposed on $300 billion of exports that Biden maintains from the Trump administration. There is no doubt that Washington chose the opportunity to ramp up tensions with China while Xi was in Europe. This is the American ploy for dredging up divisions and antagonism as a way to try to bolster its (waning) global power.

On a frivolous level, this week we saw Antony Blinken, the top American diplomat (so-called), visiting Kiev and vowing to supply more weapons and billions of dollars to a hopelessly corrupt NeoNazi regime. After he ate pizza at a restaurant notorious for displaying Nazi regalia, Blinken later went to a bar where he strummed guitar with a local rock band. The song played was Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World. This is while up to 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the U.S.-instigated proxy war against Russia. Cringe-making too is that Blinken didn’t seem to even realize that Young’s hard-hitting song is a sardonic putdown of American imperial arrogance.

Elsewhere in Beijing, after Putin and Xi conducted sincere in-depth meetings dedicated to pursuing world peace and prosperity, the two leaders enjoyed dinner and in the evening attended a magnificent concert of orchestral music celebrating their countries’ centuries of cultural heritage.

The two juxtaposed events speak volumes about human quality, sensibility, intellect and awareness of history’s profound obligation to uplift the human condition.

The empirical upshot is that the Western-dominated global disorder is obsolete and decaying. The U.S.-led empire of neocolonial capitalist predation and aggression is dying by the day. A new world order is emerging based on equality and genuine democratic respect. That new world is already present and exemplified in the form of Russia and China’s friendship.

There are sound, if deplorable, reasons why U.S. imperialists like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski always feared the historical alignment of Russia and China as portending disaster… disaster, that is, for U.S. imperialism.

Fortunately, for the rest of the world, there is hope for a better world of peace and prosperity. Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi are harbingers of that better future.

The combined military and economic strength of Russia and China together with the political wisdom of their leaders are a guarantor for a better world, despite the immense danger stemming from the nefarious Neros of the decadent Western empire.