Well then: Xi Jinping is positioning China closer to Russia. Since the outbreak of war, public statements by the Chinese leader regarding Russia and its devastating war of aggression against Ukraine have been purely ceremonial. That has now changed.
Initially, China adopted the language of the Kremlin and called the illegal war against Ukraine a “special military operation”. But Russia did not get economic and military support from Beijing. That was also on the line that most Chinese people wanted according to a survey. Moral support yes, moderate peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, also a yes. Beyond that, the government should please do nothing.
Xi Jinping’s hesitation up to this point is also likely to be related to the fact that he was not pleased that the Kremlin boss coldly ripped him off with his war against Ukraine. At the beginning of February, after a meeting in Beijing, the two leaders passed a comprehensive communiqué that praised the friendship between the two countries to the utmost and also announced cooperation in many fields, including space travel and Internet surveillance. However, Putin left Xi in the dark about his plans to really start a war, so that the attack on Ukraine came as a surprise to Beijing, as it did to the rest of the world.
Alexander Görlach is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. The PhD linguist and theologian teaches democratic theory in Germany, Austria and Spain as an honorary professor at Leuphana University. In the 2017-18 academic year, he was at National Taiwan University and City University Hong Kong to conduct research on China’s rise. He is currently researching new technologies at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute and how they are used in democracies and abused in dictatorships.
Now Xi and Putin are on the phone again, for the second time since the war began. And Xi praised the relationship, saying they see “good development dynamics” in the two countries’ friendship. They now want to work together for a “fairer world order”. Before that, the world that the dictators want to reorganize can only shudder. In Xi’s and Putin’s dark realms there is no freedom, instead there is total surveillance and torture, prison, even death for people who do not worship the leader unreservedly. In fact, in Xi’s sad China, genocide is currently taking place against the Uyghurs, an ethnic and religious minority in the north-west of the country. So the world cannot have any interest in Russia and China strengthening their position.
Their conversation, horribile dictu, was also about military cooperation. The Russian army is already helping Beijing reform its armed forces. This is nothing new. Above all, Moscow’s cadres should teach the People’s Liberation Army how best to win an attack on Taiwan with the guerrilla and house-to-house warfare that followed.
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China has territorial disputes with 15 neighbors that could escalate into war at any time, and not just with regard to Taiwan. During the 20 years that he has ruled Russia with an iron fist, Mr. Putin has not only attacked Ukraine. Both Putin and Xi are power-hungry, 19th-century imperialist-style. Accordingly, their military alliance is worrying.
Luckily, the free world is not idly watching this terrible goings-on. A few weeks ago, US President Biden visited the region and assured the US allies of his country’s attention. In addition, with the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” (IPEF), another instrument was created with which China’s influence in this region of the world should be broken. The new initiative is aimed directly at China’s activities: Since 2013, the People’s Republic has been luring more and more countries into dependence on Beijing with its “New Silk Road” initiative.
Loans are granted for infrastructure projects that poor countries will eventually no longer be able to service. Beijing then has the use of the infrastructure, which Xi Jinping wants to use primarily for military purposes. India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei and the Philippines are also part of the new IPEF alliance, as are Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia. The Southeast Asian states in the IPEF alliance are also already working together in the ASEAN organization. The new alliance increases the possibilities of this alliance to successfully reject the increasingly aggressive China in this part of the world.
The trend away from China is helping the USA and its allies. The People’s Republic is in an economic crisis, which is being fueled by Xi Jinping’s missed and failed “zero Covid” strategy. In May, 18.4 percent of China’s young people were unemployed, the highest since Xi came to power in 2013. In addition, production in China was becoming more expensive even before the pandemic, which is why a number of companies had already migrated to Vietnam and Cambodia. The political turmoil emanating from Xi’s genocidal rule has also resulted in actors from countries such as Japan and Taiwan cutting back on their investments in China and beginning to bring manufacturing facilities back home.
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This development will worry Beijing because it is all happening on its doorstep. The new alliance with Russia cannot compensate for what China may lose south of it. Russia’s economy, which, despite being home to over 140 million people, is no larger than that of Holland and Belgium combined (with just under 30 million people), is not relevant to China.
However, via the new approach, Beijing can secure cheap access to gas and oil (if another route is built for them) and to the resources that are still hidden under the tundra. If the People’s Republic decides in the coming days to support Russia militarily and to deliver weapons because of this prospect, his country would also be subject to sanctions that will further weaken the ailing economy. The people of China would, once again, greatly disappoint Xi with such a decision.
How China’s aggressive foreign policy in the Pacific is leading to a global war
