But they will sadly use it as a weapon on others. They call it weakness.
This doesn't strike me as a reasonable generalization. It implies too much stupidity. I think Mr Putin and Mr Xi are well educated and have a grasp of how the world works well beyond what we lay people think we know.
They don't believe there isn't some backchannel for the regular government (the executive mostly) to influence a court ruling when it really needs to.
They’re dictators. But no man rules alone. Irrespective of how well they understand the situation, they are constrained by their sources of political power. There is no evidence those sources understand the rule of law or separation of powers.
This is a common failure mode for authoritarian regimes, by the way. A competent leader forced to make incompetent decisions by an elite corroded by years of corrupt rule.
And, in truth, as we've learned with Trump, in many cases they do because it's harder to undo or punish his actions as fast as he can keep doing things. When there are no clear rules for enforcing the rules, we lose.
Say what you want about Trump but he knows when he has leverage.
It can hardly be lost on the Chinese that Canada, a rule of law country, is simply carrying out contractual obligations
Authoritarians don't believe in the rule of law.
Not just in the sense that they don't have respect for it and wouldn't implement it. They don't believe other governments actually don't have influence over the judiciary. Often for good reasons because courts are sometimes willing to bend the rules for the benefit of the government.