The Russo-Ukrainian War and the China Gambit

The perception that China is shrugging off Russia’s aggression on Ukraine there are some limitationsbecause they also appear to be in the “unlimited” friendship expressed by these two countries.

In the People’s Republic the massive event of the war opened cracks in the broad business sector, diplomats, academics and politicians.

A vision says that the Beijing regime stay away from this mess and demonstrates its responsibility and pragmatism as the world’s second power. Another, that the link to Moscow should not be questioned because implies surrender to the common adversary, the United States, and resign to an ally who is a central warehouse of raw materials for the Asian giant.

Let’s take a look at how these trends are reflected. Chinese ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xiangong, shortly after the war began, assured the attacked people that “we will always respect your state and your borders” and praised the strength of the Ukrainian people.

His US counterpart, veteran diplomat Qing Gang, went further by clarifying a memorable text in Washington Postthat this war “does not benefit China” and recalled that Ukraine is home to more than 6,000 Chinese citizens and Beijing is the largest trading partner of both kyiv and Moscow.

The “decent” output

From the academic side, an important voice in this line is that of Hu Wei, vice president of the Center for Policy Research, an institute attached to the State Council, meaning authority, and also head of the Research Association on Public Policy. of Shanghai.

In an article full of details and historical references, published in the first half of March, he warned that the best outcome for this war would be Putin. Find “a decent way out” with some sort of agreement in Kyiv.

In this academic view, the danger of this war is that “it will consolidate the US Indo-Pacific strategy, and countries like Japan will remain closer to Washington, which will form a single and broad democratic front without precedent ”.

China will be besieged not only by NATO, but also by all US -linked strategic defense organizations (QUAD, AUKUS) in the region. “Separating from Putin and surrendering neutrality will help build China’s international image and it will facilitate its relationship with the US, “he advised.

If we want to find a solid example from the other side of the crack, this professor is also useful. Xi Jinping, who has met the Russian leader 38 times in the past nine years, immediately censored the Mandarin version of the article. No one in China can read it. And he amplified the message that conflict is the sole responsibility of NATO appetites.

Xi Jinping’s attitude disappointed his premier Li Keqiang who stood on the other side of the divide, but so did North Americans and Europeans, except for the hawks on this side of the world who pushed to put the Russians and Chinese. on both the boat and front. a similar shipwreck.

Other connoisseurs of the multiplicity of Chinese boxes, observe, however, despite that step. There are analysts who admit to these hardness but some are skeptical hidden class of interest behind these positions in Beijing. That would explain the Asian giant’s abstention, rather than a vertical alignment with Russia, on UN votes on the war.

china is wrongamong the most public achievements in economic and domestic development in recent decades. It makes noticeable pandemic mistakes with paralyzed locks and no results, where it has previously succeeded in controlling the disease.

It also hit the most successful company in the country with a pile of regulations already in place losses of 1.7 billion dollars in market value to the ten largest companies in the country.

interest at stake

These are noticeable failures to tell the difficulty of refuting an increasingly personalistic and authoritarian model. It will also be seen if China is also not mistaken with Russia and this conflict by refusing to call war what is actually happening in Ukraine. And, instead, forcefully exposes the unwavering friendship with the Kremlin nomenclature.

But, under the look, we can see that this war is not really convenient for China, as Ambassador Qin Gang said, because it constitutes a commercial and future conflict with its main clients, Europe and the United States, by intoxication in China. People’s Republic with unpredictable Russian.

The legitimacy of President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party, depends only on economic growth which in turn depends on the pragmatic relationship established by China, the backbone of the global production chain, together with these two powers.

Did Xi Jinping know his ally’s intentions? Critics of the attack deny this, but others say the information shared is up to that. it was agreed that the invasion would take place after the Winter Olympics, how did it happen. In this case, why did the regime allow this adventure to grow, which was conducive to the damage it caused?

The answers to that question can be exciting. Depending on how you look at it, Russia’s military success is not in China’s interest. Ang blitzkrieg that Putin thought, that is, a short and successful attack that engulfed the whole of Ukraine,ang is intended as the first step of reconstruction in the capitalist format of Russian influence in Eastern Europethe backyard of Moscow.

The underlying cause of the aggression, therefore, was not NATO’s mistakes in pride in the region, as claimed, but rather the restoration of an economic and political capacity that would return to the place of global power in Russia. Such a result generated a serious geopolitical defects in the vision of Beijing.

“A stronger Russia would mean less willingness to cooperate with China, more willingness to pursue its own great power agenda, to pursue it to a level where it could even harm China’s interests, which aims to position itself as the third player between the USA and the People’s Republic, resigning the alliance with Beijing ”, maintains the study of another sinologist, Csaba Barnabas Horvath, on the Geopolitical Monitor portal.

This measure has manageable sides. It can be estimated that China has a clear picture of military capacity and the strategic level of Russia’s side in exclude any alternative to a successful lightning strike in battle first.

If so, they were not mistaken. The Russian campaign has been a disaster so far. But if the conflict lasts, as it looks, there will be big wearing in Russia with the continuing loss of people, equipment and an economic depth that cannot be resolved at the end of the conflict.

Even if the Kremlin took some parts of Ukrainian land and raised those achievements to the height of a historic victory, as Ian Bremer of the Eurasia Group points out, never going back to “previous stability”.

“Russia will remain insecure under the sanctions of the allies and there will be some commercial relations with Europe that could change that situation,” he maintained. It will also deal with ongoing guerrilla rebellion in those regions.

a major region

Such a situation will not offend China. Russia, whose pre -war economy was ten times smaller than its Asian ally, would be a virtual satellite of the People’s Republic.

It is a doubly significant alternative, political and practical, for Xi Jinping to expose the privacy of the party leadership to find the support he needs to combine. Next August, he will need unbroken guarantees for his self -construction project in the third term, in a virtual emperor in the eternal country overflowing limits of age, modernity and tradition.

Horvath draws attention to a significant and lesser-known fact of the Sino-Russian link. This is Siberia. He refers to it as “key geopolitical factor” in binational relations. Why is it so important?

Eastern Siberia, east of the Yenisei River, with a large area of ​​more than 10 million square kilometers, covers about 60% of Russia’s territory, but is inhabited by only 10% of the national population, 14 million people.

It is noteworthy for reference that Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, the neighboring northern region of China, have a combined population of at least 123 million people.

The lack of defense of the territory was combined with the wealth of natural resources it focused on and needed by the People’s Republic’s devouring economy. China, which only regained relations with Russia after the collapse of the USSR, from which it differs in a long string of conflictsyou need government -supported Moscow to reach those resources.

“So, the poorer Russia, the better for the Chinese strategy,” the analyst said. Even if there was internal insurgency in Russia as a result of the Ukrainian conflict, Beijing could be considered has the right to “protect” that space.

The war in Ukraine was an unexpected opportunity on this geopolitical journey. A friendship with limits, in any case. “There is no eternal ally or eternal enemy. Only our interests are eternal and eternal ”, Hu Wei correctly warned in his text full of caution.
Copyright Clarin 2022