https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/14/times-person-of-the-year-revels-the-wests-stunning-weakness-under-chinas-deadly-threat/
Xi Jinping took a disaster and, through calculated lies and dictatorial cruelty, accomplished what seemed nearly impossible just last year.
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is an embarrassment. Designed to acknowledge and document men, women and groups who’ve changed the world, historically it never promised to fill readers with warm and fuzzy feelings: Impact didn’t require good intentions, and didn’t necessitate good results.
Over much of its 93-year history, world-changers like Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Soong Mei-ling, and Adolf Hitler held the title. Aside from being very different people with different codes and different legacies, these people didn’t win simply by virtue of not being the other guy; and for the lion’s share of their lives, for good or evil they interacted with the world outside the comforts of their own homes.
In modern years, however, winners have moved away from the sometimes uncomfortable toward feel-gooders, like Greta Thunberg, a child whose accomplishments peak at getting adults to applaud her tantrums.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, hardly world-shaping visionaries, fit comfortably into this trend. “Defeating the Minotaur was one thing; finding the way out of the labyrinth is another,” read the cringeworthy prose accompanying Time’s puff piece. “A dark winter has descended, and there will be no rest for the victors.”
So, who should have earned the title this year? Who changed the world in ways that just a short while ago we would have struggled to imagine? There’s only one person, and he isn’t included in runner-ups Donald Trump, Anthony Fauci, or “the movement for racial justice.” He is China’s brutal dictator, Xi Jinping.
Consider the evidence. At the dawn of 2020, Xi had a massive problem on his hands. For the third time in 23 years, China had lost control of a deadly disease, and this time evidence placed its origin in suspiciously close proximity to a secretive Chinese government bio laboratory.