After managing a strained smile and handshake for the cameras, President Xi Jinping walked away from Vladimir Putin with a face like stone. By most accounts, the recent meeting in Uzbekistan between the two leaders, who once spoke of each other as “best friends” and “bosom buddies,” was frosty. In a remarkable admission, Putin acknowledged that the Chinese leader had arrived with “questions and concerns” about the course of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Putin promised to better explain “our position on this issue, although we have talked about it before”.
Instead, Putin has decided to escalate further, announcing the mobilisation of 300,000 reservists in an effort to salvage Russia’s position as its forces flounder in the face of a sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive. The mobilisation — along with accompanying threats to use nuclear weapons if Russian territory is endangered — is unlikely to have improved Xi’s mood. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin immediately called for a “ceasefire”. Foreign Minister Wang Yi later pressed for mediation and “every effort to strive for peace” in the conflict, while China’s ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun urged de-escalation and “a political settlement as soon as possible”.
China’s frustration with Russia is clearly growing. The conflict has left Beijing in an exceptionally awkward position. A short, sharp war that toppled the pro-Western Ukrainian government — i.e. what Putin appears to have originally expected — would undoubtedly have been a big win for China, severely undermining the unity and influence of the Western liberal order that it also seeks to overturn. It’s possible this was the bright future Xi was told to expect when, just before the war, Putin met him in February and the two leaders signed a joint statement declaring there were now “no limits” to the China-Russia partnership. Fast forward to today, however, and the protracted conflict, and the exposure of the Russian army’s simultaneous weakness and brutality, has turned into a serious headache for China.
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Diplomatically, Beijing has attempted to straddle the fence on the war by supporting Russia rhetorically and morally even as it refrains from providing it with any of the material support Moscow has begged for with growing desperation. Russia has had to settle for shoddy, second-hand armaments from North Korea and Iran instead of the high-tech kit from China that it probably expected to receive. Even Washington has, almost grudgingly, admitted that China has so far complied with its sanctions on Russia.
The distinctly materialist Marxist-Leninist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) probably assumed its response would be appreciated around the world. Instead, no one is happy: the West has reacted with moral outrage that China hasn’t openly denounced Russia, while the Russians doubtless privately seethe with a sense of betrayal, having discovered that “our Chinese friends are tough bargainers”, as Putin let slip.
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Overall, the war is increasingly turning into a diplomatic disaster for Beijing, helping to drive perceptions of China to record lows around the world. In particular, it has shattered previously close ties with Europe. The European Union is now preparing a series of measures targeting forced labour and “economic coercion” that are likely to limit the EU-China trade relationship. Even the once reliably friendly — some might say naïve — Germans are now rapidly rethinking their tight economic relationship with China. The newly elected Giorgia Meloni, soon-to-be prime minister of Europe’s third-largest economy, is also a ferocious China hawk who has pledged to reconsider Italian support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative and make Taiwan “an essential concern for Italy”. Meanwhile, once-enthusiastic countries in Eastern and Central Europe, led by the Baltic States, have begun to drop out of diplomatic and economic arrangements with Beijing. And with the advent of the war worsening existing concerns about Xi’s draconian zero-Covid policies, China has, as EU Chamber of Commerce president Jörg Wuttke recently pointed out, begun to rapidly lose “its allure as an investment destination” for European companies overall.
For Xi, this could not come at a worse time. China is facing an exceptionally challenging economic outlook, including a worsening real-estate crisis, a debt bubble totalling at least 300% of GDP, an unprecedented level of capital flight, and a youth unemployment rate already over 20% — not to mention the damage inflicted by rolling Covid lockdowns. China simply cannot afford to lose additional trade and investment right now, especially from an economic partner as large as Europe. Meanwhile, the broader inflationary and recessionary pressures unleashed by the war and Western energy sanctions threaten to badly limit the market for worldwide exports at the very moment they are most needed by China’s struggling economy.
Worst of all, China is only two weeks away from the 20th Party Congress, the defining event of the Chinese Communist Party’s cutthroat internal politics. Held only once every five years, this will be the moment the party’s next top leadership is selected — and the moment Xi makes a bid to remain in power beyond his allotted two terms in office, potentially setting himself up to rule for life. For ten years Xi has plotted and manoeuvred to make this opportunity possible, and all he needs now is some stability and the chance to maintain a cultivated image of steady, all-knowing competence. But Putin has helped dash Xi’s hope for an uneventful 2022, opening a chink in his carefully crafted armour.
Last weekend, wild rumours that a coup had deposed Xi swept the internet. Elite military units under the command of a 105-year-old politician had taken over Beijing and placed him under house arrest. Military convoys were on the move across China. Flights cancelled around the country were the result of mutinies or military manoeuvres, not the weather. One of Xi’s rivals was about to take charge; the whole regime was about to collapse.
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All of this speculation was baseless, and Xi soon reappeared to pointedly lead all his top colleagues around a museum exhibit on “Forging Ahead in the New Era”. But the fact that the rumours seemed plausible to so many speaks to a growing view, inside as well as outside China, that events and his own policies may have left Xi vulnerable — or even cost him the “Mandate of Heaven” that legitimises an Emperor's rule.
Even so, Xi remains in little danger of failing to secure a third term, let alone falling from power. The analysis of a new database of CCP power networks by the Asia Society Policy Institute demonstrates just how completely he and his loyalists have managed to seize and consolidate control over the three crucial levers of hard power in China’s Leninist system — what Mao Zedong famously described as “the gun” (the military), “the pen” (the propaganda organs), and “the knife” (the security and intelligence services).
Xi may be increasingly vulnerable in a different way, however. While his own position appears relatively unthreatened, the same can’t be said for his plan to pack the Politburo (the CCP’s top 25 leaders) with his protégés and factional allies, ensuring his path to lifetime rule and completing his personality cult. Xi’s economic mismanagement and strategic misstep of personally linking himself too closely to Putin have exposed him and his political faction to internal criticism in a manner that was almost unthinkable even two years ago. Xi had clearly hoped to replace his most obvious rival, Premier Li Keqiang (China’s second-ranked leader), with his personal protégé at the Party Congress, but this now looks substantially less probable. It is now more likely that Xi will have to compromise by accepting the elevation of Wang Yang, a senior leader connected to Li’s faction, to this position, as well as permitting the promotion of other reform-minded economic technocrats more sympathetic to Li throughout the system.
There has also been evidence in recent months that pro-Russia cadres within the diplomatic corps are beginning to be sidelined in favour of more pro-Western figures. The formerly high-flying and vocally pro-Russian Le Yucheng, who was once seen as a shoe-in as China’s next Foreign Minister, was suddenly demoted this summer and removed from the foreign affairs system entirely. Those who have emerged as the most likely replacements for the position, including Ma Zhouxu, Xie Feng, and Liu Jieyi, all have deep career ties to Europe, the United States, and international institutions such as the UN.
All this points to the possibility of an impending turn in Chinese policy. This doesn’t mean Xi is likely to throw Putin under the bus anytime soon — their high-profile “friendship” would make doing so disastrous for Xi’s credibility. But Xi’s patience with Moscow is clearly wearing thin. When Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu blithely declared on television last week that “we are at war not only with Ukraine and the Ukrainian army, but with the collective West”, faces in Beijing must have grown pale. This is not something China can afford to be prematurely dragged into right now.
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Instead, regardless of whether he is under pressure from other political factions within China, Xi currently has an incentive to stabilise relations with Europe and the United States as much as is still feasible, and to seize on all available sources of growth for the Chinese economy, at least for the coming year. By contrast, he has little incentive to be generous with Moscow: now that Russia has been largely cut off from Western markets and suppliers, it needs China a lot more than China needs Russia.
It’s at least conceivable, then, that Xi could very well begin to privately pressure Putin to find a way out of the war and back to some semblance of global stability. Even if he doesn’t, unless Russia can turn things around in a hurry, Beijing is more likely to try to cut its losses and take measures to selectively distance itself from Moscow as it prepares to make the best of a world in which Russian power and influence are significantly reduced. We may have already seen an example of this two weeks ago when Xi — just ahead of his meeting with Putin — flew to Astana and pledged that China would “resolutely support Kazakhstan in the defence of its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity”, effectively evicting and replacing Russia as the Central Asian state’s security guarantor and patron.
China did not sign up for the massive blunder Putin’s adventure in Ukraine has become, and Xi no doubt wishes the whole affair could simply go away. But Russia’s flailing means he will face an increasingly stark choice: either continue to draw away from Russia and its mess, or pivot dramatically and unleash enough Chinese military assistance to make sure Russia can win decisively, setting up an epochal clash with the West. Fortunately, all signs currently point in the direction of the former.
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SubscribeI find this article to be very thinly sourced and it’s conclusions very weak.The writer is leaning very heavily on speculations about the emotional states and thought process of Putin and Xi, things he can’t possibly know.
There is very little meat on these bones. Putin is an old school Cold War warrior and Xi has been a party technocrat his entire adult life. They are both stone cold political players, not highly emotion people.
That’s his everyday face, he looks like that all the time ! It’s a classic CCP poker face. Xi has referred to Putin as his “best and bosom friend” but great power geo-politics just isn’t played out on that level. This is The Great Game, not some high school bromance.
If you want to know about the relations between Russia and China look at what actually happens on the ground, trade, money, technology, weapons and resources. If Beijing is going to break with Moscow and go to the west then they will have to get a better deal on all those things than they are currently getting now.
How likely do you think that is ?
The whole of the Western media is in war propaganda mode. Truth is the first casualty there. They just make up anything they think they can spin to the Western public, then print it. If lying in print carried a jail sentence, they’d have to release Julian Assange to make way for the UK wordsmiths all locked up as a job lot.
I agree with that! On the News today the words “might consider” were used twice – both weasel words!
OK Rhys, let’s just run a quick reality check here.
a) What proportion of Western media reporting on the Ukraine war is “lies” (as you would have it) ?
b) What proportion of Russian government and media reporting on the Ukraine war is “lies” ?
Is b) really smaller than a) ?
a) is smaller than b) I imagine (since I never read or listen to b). Still, a) is substantial.
..there is also the crucial factor that China alone vs the USA (read Taiwan for Ukraine) will not go well for China. Also the question: Why is it critical for the US to weaken (destroy the capability of) Russia? Answer: The US is not strong enough to defeat a combined enemy: Russia+China. Xi knows this only too well.. ie that the US will want to pick ’em off one at a time.
Why is ghe US so belligerent? Answer: The US is finished as an economic Empire and its only hope is to destroy its would be replacement China eith its vassals in the other BRICS states.
BRICS (with many more would be members queued up) is clearly the newly emerging empire unless the US can defeat it in its embryonic state.. Once established the new BRICS+ empire will destroy the US economically. Will the US then, just like Putin today, resort to the nuclear threat goven it will be under an existential threat? My bet is yes it will. It won’t be the first time remember?
Utter BS from start to finish.
I agree, this is a very poor article . Total conjecture and hyperbole. Can this author read Putin & Xi’s faces & body language so well as to write an entire article on what he thinks it says? Only time will tell whether Putin’s war was disastrous for him & whether it has caused his & Xi’s relationship to be strained . In my opinion a total non article !
Yes this article may, indeed, be primarily conjecture and hyperbole. It may, however, be just as plausible as the conjecture and hyperbole that constitutes the propagandist narrative churned out continuously in the MSM, and is thus worthy of consideration.
eh? Over 50% of Chinese trade is with western oriented countries, and you think China isn’t almost totally dependent on trade with the west? Russia represents a measly 2% of their trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China
But putting your error strewn analysis of trade aside, the best outcome of the Ukraine war, which isn’t mentioned by this author, is it has provided the west with a proven template for bleeding China dry if it ever invades Taiwan. All the necessary lessons have been learned and applied – political unity in trade sanctions; avoidance of dependence on China for energy and technology; and the strategy to take on a great power without confront8ng them directly.
If the west continues to support Ukraine then Putin is likely to be replaced eventually, and China will not invade Taiwan.
Thanks for the figures but I think it’s a mistake to watch only trade denominated in $USD. Is a billion in oil worth a billion in microchips ? Perhaps, perhaps not. I once heard that the USA spends more than a billion per year on toys for dogs (probably manufactured mainly in China). Is that billion $USD of squeaky rubber bones worth a billion in gasoline, weapons or medicines ? On one level yes it is, but on another more fundamental level, No, absolutely not. I also see those 2018 figures show China purchasing 41.3 B $USD from Russia in total. Now entering October, Bloomburg states China has purchased 35 B $USD in energy from Russia. that’s more than 83% of the 2018 total just in that one category.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-22/china-boosts-spending-on-russian-energy-to-35-billion-since-war?leadSource=uverify%20wall
And that’s only what’s on the books that Bloomburg and Co. have access to. Pipelines aren’t included. I could go on but basically Russian – Chinese trade is strong and heading upwards
I think you are very wrong in seeing any plan for Taiwan in the actions in Ukraine. The physical, economic and political terrain is vastly different. The standard western view of Beijing moving on Taiwan is some sort of Red Army amphibious assault doing and Asian re-run of D-Day. What I think is a much more likely scenario is Red Taiwanese and Blue Taiwanese fighting it out in the streets and parliament of Taipei. That’s the sort of problem that can’t be solved with HIMARS or the Marine Corps.
Washington can never defend the independence of Taiwan, that’s a ridiculous idea. A truly independent Taipei would be free to deal with Beijing (or Moscow, Pyongyang, Tehran etc.) in a way that got the best deal for the Taiwanese people. Washington can never allow that to happen. The interests of Taiwan will remain subordinate to the interests of Washington. That’s the only sort of “defense” Washington will allow.
Taiwan is and must remain a vassal state
RE: “Washington can never allow that to happen.”
based on what? Your nose, from which your fingers pulled it?
Why can’t Washington allow that happen? Why would it even care? I suspect Washington would be only too happy if Taiwan were able to be truly independent, and even as it is, Taiwan’s democratically elected government still has legitimacy and is more than able to govern in the country’s own interests. The prosperity and happiness of its people are marred only by the threat of Chinese invasion and the thought of being controlled by totalitarian Beijing.
Finally your scenario between “red” and “blue” Taiwanese is nonsense. Polls show only about 6% of Taiwanese favour unification with Beijing. And who could blame them?
Ach I was a wee bit harsh there!
There are clear material signs that China-Russoa relations have become awkward this year. For example, AIIB freezing all investment in Russia and Belarus, as well as changing its annual meeting in October from Moscow to virtual.
I’ll see your awkward virtual meeting and raise you Vostok ’22
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/01/russia-and-china-launch-large-scale-military-drills-amid-tensions-with-us
And how accurate do you think publicly stated AIIB figures actually are ? An important part of evading sanctions would be keeping things off the books.
“Putin is an old school Cold War warrior and Xi has been a party technocrat his entire adult life. They are both stone cold political players, not highly emotion people.”
“The writer is leaning very heavily on speculations about the emotional states and thought process of Putin and Xi, things he can’t possibly know.”
Sorry, but so are you.
Well thought out reply, there is no meat to this other than trying to convince some rats to stay on board a sinking ship
China needs customers who can afford to buy from them. They must be getting jumpy as the world slides into economic chaos…
What do you think the bankrupt US needs? It still seems to spend north of half a trillion dollars on an arms industry that needs to be shut down for the sake of world peace…..
Trouble is everyone else is more bankrupt.
===
Only Russia and China should have arms industries?
====
The real problem is child abuse.
Hitler was an abused child. Stalin. Putin. Child abuse causes PTSD.
PTSD leaves the victim permanently angry
PTSD leaves some victims in extreme desire for power and control
PTSD destroys human empathy and trust
And Europe still doesn’t notice.
Hitler, Stalin and Putin were no more “abused” than billions of other children.- children who didn’t become evil killers. In fact there are many people who have had much worse lives who have grown to be leaders of peace.
I’m tired of The excuse of its all down to a bad childhood nonsense.
Not in my case. I’m a pacifist and don’t do anger! Maybe I’m unique? No: I think you’re wrong.. too Freudian..
No you’re a troll, in fact you’re lots of trills
as george orwell said ‘Pacifists only exist because someone else chose to fight on their behalf’
I suspect the US sees its need for military might as greater than ever! If the Dollar is finished the US is finished. Its ownly hope is military defeat of its economic enemies who are about to replace the Dollar. It can only defeat China with Russia out of the way. Hence the refusal to negotiate peace in the Ukraine.. Russia must be taken out of the equation first: then China look out!
But it’s a big world and China needs imports as well. The switch from Western trading partners will take time: China is good at ‘time’.
Over 50% of their trade is with the west – if China wants to gain global economic supremacy in the next 20 years it can’t afford to lose 50% of its market which developing countries won’t make up for in even 50 years. They ain’t that patient under Xi.
“China is good at time.” Perhaps not this time. Their economy is in serious trouble for several reasons including a real estate bust that is still in its early stages. Longer-term, China’s demographics are an inevitable train wreck.
Rather worrying for everyone–but certainly not unexpected–is that those “wild rumours” about a coup in Beijing were so easily credited.
But when a regime creates an information monopoly for itself, it almost always means that no one really believes the official line. People then always assume the very worst.
We’re seeing that play out right now in Donbas. The impending disaster at Lyman will be that much worse because Putin’s regime can’t acknowledge it.
That’s why these regimes collapse so quickly.
They lose their credibility years earlier.
I think you are drawing seriously wrong conclusions from the “Beijing coup rumors” event. If we hear a story that is later proven to be false, that is NOT additional evidence that the story was in any way true, even if many people believed it to be true. I see it as additional evidence that there are false stories out there (perhaps many) and that people can be fooled (perhaps easily). If you jump at a shadow in the night, think it’s a ghost then turn on the light and see it was just a cat, you have recieved no additional information to support the existence of ghosts. You have received additional information about how you can be mistaken.
The linked article about the false rumors is worth reading
Considering that the tweets were traced back to Falun Gong and Indian nationalist media, I’m leaning strongly towards disinformation.
Thanks for not addressing my point: authoritarian regimes with a monopoly on info create a far greater trust issue than with any western nation.
The problem is: false rumours can be easily countered almost anywhere on the planet, except in China, and now, Russia.
Xi’s monomaniacal plan of zero covid has undermined any trust the Chines may once have had in his govt.
Just how Xi gets it back is a real question.
Mr Logan – the US and UK Press AND regimes lost their credibility 20 years ago over Iraq, cemented that with bombing Libya to a pulp and then trying it on in Syria. They are out of control genocidal regimes with not one shred of integrity within them. The whole of the USA/UK ‘press’ is now official government/Deep State propaganda and absolutely nothing they wrote about Covid19, lockdowns since March 2020 was anything but absolute lies. They actively covered up every truthful whistleblower and now the vaccines are proven to be the most dangerous vaccines in history, their refusal to use cheap off-patent drugs with a 50 year human safety record to treat 90%+ of those who actually got ill means that, in legal terms, they are wilful conspirators to mass murder. OK, you couldn’t predict in advance who was going to die, but they wilfully PREVENTED deaths by blocking approaches proven in the developing world to be hugely effective.
We aren’t some moral benchmark you know. We are off the scale renegade mobsters.
Sad, but true.
This is complete nonsense. There was extensive reporting in opposition to the Iraq War.
And curiously enough, we were free and safe to protest and demonstrate opposition to it. Unlike in Russia. Or China.
Please try to retain some balance. You don’t do your arguments any credit by so massively over-stating them.
And if you’re looking for mobsters, I suggest the Putin regime should be your first stop.
Rhys has no balance, everything that happens in the world, he twists around to support his hatred for the West, and support for his poor Putin, a bloodthirsty, paranoid, psychopathic criminal.
He certainly has a mild obsession with the malfeasance of security agencies – I wonder if he would be willing to give us his opinion on the FSB, GRU & pals? In the interests of balance, and disclosure, how about it Rhys?
And now “we” are destroying Putin’s regime.
It will be a miracle if the new Russian oblast of Luhansk remains Russian by the end of the month. Ditto for Donetsk.
So, at least “we” are pretty effective renegade mobsters.
Thanks for the informative article despite there being a lot of conjecture. I appreciate Unherd using specialists in their field to get a bigger picture and different angle than MSM would be interested in although there always seems to be a few commenters to such articles who seem to know even better and readily question or dismiss specific details in these. Opinions are OK but don’t get carried away.
Putin hell bent on destroying the Western world economies/China’s profitable market…why would China support this? China probably thinks like most of the rest of the world…all this death and economic destruction for four measly localities and a leaders oversized ego? Get rid.
You’re missing the crucial global economic considerations.. see my other contributions.
The article tries it’s best to understand the political movements before this year’s CCP congress. It is a daunting job as it is inscrutable. After the congress we shall all be wiser. Anyway the ‘decrepit West’, with all it’s failings,still has some cards to play after all.
The article doesn’t try to do anything but sow seeds that Putin is globally isolated.
Given the dedollarisation programme active in both Beijing and Moscow, given the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation activities which don’t include the West, given all kinds of other initiatives in Asia to which the USA has not been invited, I see zero need for China to ’embrace the West’. It’s been doing the exact opposite for several years, given the never-ending US sabre-rattling in their part of the world.
It’s sad that people who call themselves ‘journalists’ take MI6/CIA misinformation as a reliable source. They have proven the past 50 years to be almost always deliberate MISinformation.
The dedollarisation program will not work well if the Yuan collapses or Russia does.
Both are likely events.
..and I believe the US (+UK) are desperately trying to sabotage these developments. If the US was united at home and didn’t have a doddery old man in charge: and if the UK wasn’t broke and in the hand of desperate ideologues there might be some chance of them succeeding. As it is both countries look very precarious.
The most precarious democracy is infinitely better than the most successful of dictatorships.
Really? In the UK we now have looters in Central London, getting away with it. We have street fighting between muslims and Hindus Birmingham with which the police have failed to cope.
Our energy costs have gone sky high and lots of people will die of cold this winter. Business will shut down as manufacturing will become financially unviable. Iraq under Hussein and Albania under Hoxha were stable and progressive. Things improved for the people. Dissidents and trouble-makers got the chop.
“infinitely better” For whom?
This idjit thinks totalitarian albania under Hoxha and gangster Iraq under Hussein are better than current Britain. He thinks “things improved for the people” under those regimes. Funny how the people of Albania have an entirely different view. But obviously this idjit likes the idea that “dissidents and ‘troublemakers’ get the chop.”
They don’t need to sabotage it. The whole thing’s a fantasy.
Putin is globally isolated amongst the nations and organisations that actually matter. I’m surprised this needs saying.
Your fantasy that the USA is in some sort of terminal decline is just that – a fantasy. As is the SCO and “dedollarisation”.
I don’t necessarily think China calling for a ceasefire is undermining Putin.
Russia are currently losing ground on the battlefield. Surely a ceasefire that froze the current lines and allowed Russia international recognition of the new borders is exactly what Putin would want?
I believe that China after witnessing a political and military performance, that resembles Austro-hungaries performance in WWI are probably reconsidering their options. They will be well aware of the dangers of aligning with a dying empire , and a corrupted culture.
Germany and Russia had secret deal to pump gas under the Baltic into Alemania. Once the pipes were sabotaged the gas bubbles rose to the surface of the Baltic for all to plainly see the revealed thwarting of the plot.
Shoo-in. C’mon, man.
Why do you call him “President” Xi? He is “Chairman” Xi.
It seems to me that China would want Putin to resolve the debacle of his invasion of Ukraine quickly now it has failed. The Russians clearly can’t fight and are now proven to be no threat to us. This is probably true of Chinese forces too. We need to re-establish Western markets and production and arm ourselves sufficiently. We will be poorer but we might still be able to live in liberty as a free people.
I don’t buy it.
Xi’s consolidation of power has effectively left him with no room to maneuver around policy errors. Thus his mistakes will be magnified far more than under a freer system with checks and balances. Both Russia and China have social contracts whereby citizens enjoy rising living standards and the ruling party is rarely opposed. Both governments are facing an end to such a contract. The Chinese growth miracle is over and Russia remains a gas station masquerading as a country.
I am hesitant to believe any sort of populist revolt can throw these regimes to the dustbin only because technology (sadly western tech) has strengthened authoritarian rulers. China will not collapse any time soon but they have to rise to the occasion in a way their earlier predecessors did not. They had every tailwind imaginable since 1980 but all these have now turned into nastier and nastier headwinds. The Chinese people are incredibly savvy but no amount of intellectual power can overcome a strongman rule without blood. Russians are the same (this is the country of Tolstoy, chess, and ballet).
It’s a brave, new world. For all intents and purposes the post WW2 order breathed its last on February 23rd, 2022.
The entire premise of this article is wrong. China doens’t want the war in Ukraine to stop anytime soon. As long as the war drags on, there is no chance of reconciliation between Russia and the West.
The nightmare situation for China would be a “Biden to Moscow” (similar to a “Nixon to Beijing” moment in the 1970s) where the US turned Russia against China.
China and Russia are long term enemies!
The Russian far east is a fat prize for China. Under populated and full of resources it is a natural area for Chinese expansion. What the czars took from the weak Quing dynasty the powerful Mao dynasty will take back from the weak post Solviet Russia. The Ukraine War hss exposed how weak Russia is. The predator will eat the wounded prey.
Xi, too mob boss just like Putin, would gladly have aligned with like-minded tyrant, if he was not so stupid as to lose the war. It’s not like Xi is worried about human rights abuses and genocide committed by Russians? Xi heads up a criminal empire camouflaging as CCP but in reality nothing more than a violent racket shaking down businesses for money. Russia and China are exactly as morally bankrupt, violent and cynical regimes. Xi is simply, just, a little smarter. He bet on Ukraine falling and lost. It was not a policy blunder. China is an enemy, not adversary, but enemy of the free world, as is Russia. Their criminality is different, though. China steals from and corrupts the West, and domestically harvests organs from political prisoners and runs a tech-enabled Stalinist repression and surveillance system that is as dystopian as it can get. Russia is more openly genocidal- without even trying to conceal anything, it’s propaganda much more crass and obvious. Regardless ultimately both regimes are in essence criminal syndicates,
They’re still jointly building the replacement of USD as the world’s reserve currency. Energy is the real currency now, and settlement will continue to happen in energy-rich countries’ terms.
Except that many more countries are energy rich now, or potentially so, thanks to fracking. And the US is richest of all.
The lesson to take from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is surely clear?
No longer can we expect to rely on the US for our defence
China is the real threat and Taiwan the upcoming problem
The UK & Japan have commenced military defence weapons cooperation, we need to increase this cooperation with Japan and others like South Korea forming a 3rd defence global alliance that can compete with China/Russia and the USA as an effective force.
Sadly at present we cannot, and should not, rely on the EU as a trusted ally
I don’t agree with the things you say are “surely clear” as a result of Russia’s invasion. Ukraine has benefited from the US in the supply of arms. The US acts according to their interests. The crippling of Russia is one. You can expect to rely on the US if you benefit their interests. I think China has had a cold shower over the events in Ukraine and how the world responded and in how Russia has displayed its weakness. We may, as a consequence, suspect China may not be as powerful as we imagined and that they can be compromised in ways we didn’t anticipate. So I think that weakens their position a little with Taiwan. I don’t think there’s a real effective China/Russia relationship anymore, if there ever was. What you did say about the EU I agree with, they cannot be trusted. In a way quite horrible, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been an advantage for the West.
Do you seriously believe there is a functional UK-US relationship any more??
I don’t think I said that. But there is AUKUS, so yes, there is obviously some relationship there. What the state of its health is I have no idea, but still, it’s there.
Yes there is: not economically perhaps but militarily for sure!
Yes. There is a very strong military and intelligence cooperation. Surprised you are not aware of this. This sort of thing continues regardless of the presidents or parties in government.
yes.
The US is the master and the UK is the subordinate in the relationship. Functional yes, but obviously not equal.
..and that advantage is?
Well, I may not be right, but I think my comment was reasonably clear about what I think.
After Afghanistan US support could certainly be questioned. Ukraine changed all that. The US has supplied the Ukrainians intelligence, weapons, training (and probably battle strategy) that’s fended off and now begun to defeat the Russians. Putin didn’t fear the EU and NATO without the US, yet the US has remained the backbone and arsenal that will soon hand him a crippling defeat. The EU upheld its end of the bargain and is arguably suffering the frontline economic fallout. The alliance, including the US, held strong and defeated another evil empire — just like the century before. Moving forward, the US would welcome the EU pulling more of its own weight. Hopefully lessons have been learned about weak militaries and naïve energy dependence on mortal enemies.
The job is not done yet. We still have to see if the EU countries can a) last the distance and b) start taking their own defence seriously. Only the frontline states (Poland, the Baltics, etc) seem to be reliable here.
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What lesson do you take from the US spending $5bn in Ukraine to secure a Maidan-led coup? The never-ending support of racist policies in Kiev ostracising the Russian language, those with Russian ancestry etc? The provision of $40bn of weapons for the corrupt mobsters in Kiev to sell to terrorists on the black market?
Don’t we need to learn that corrupt mobsters like that aren’t worth wasting billions on?
Don’t we need to learn to enforce Minsk II via France/Germany and the whole of Europe telling Washington not to constantly undermine peace initiatives?
And don’t we need to understand that the USA are NOT our allies, we are their satrapies??
I haven’t believed in a Special Relationship for 20 years and I’m beyond the point of believing that the USA can behave internationally without being denazified, demilitarised and forcibly broken up into statelets.
Forgive me interrupting your rant, but are those pictures we see of US supplied HIMARS being used in Ukraine all fakes ? And which terrorists now have such systems ?
The USA are legally our allies and have been for decades. I’ve yet to see a serious UK political party proposing this is a) wrong or b) changed.
Outing himself as a Russian toadie. And he wants to “denazify” the U.S. *snort*
Your talk of denazification of the US kind of gives the game away. We don’t talk like that here.
Maybe we should back the obvious winner: China? Join BRICS? Isolate the US which is looking like the obvious loser?
I think we some paid up Russo Chinese party members here.They doth protest too much and it shows
That would be you, my friend, not the U.S.
Simply put,FAKE NEWS
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