For the Kremlin, its “partner of no limits”, China, isn’t doing enough to aid Russia’s war against Ukraine.

So, Russia has signed a peace treaty with North Korea, hoping to pressure China into backing Moscow’s war effort further.

Meanwhile, the West sees China as far too helpful to Russia. The sentiment in the West was best captured on July 10, 2024, during a summit in Washington DC.

This article is the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the UK Defence Journal. If you would like to submit your own article on this topic or any other, please see our submission guidelines. 

Heads of state and government of Nato countries jointly proclaimed that China is a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against the Ukraine, and also called on China “to cease all material and political support to Russia’s war effort”.

To the West, China’s aid, though short of actual weapons supply, is more than enough to fuel Russia’s war machine. This in turn poses a security threat to Europe.

But Nato’s message and Russia’s implicit code to China seem to indicate one thing: Beijing’s fence sitting days are numbered, and it needs to choose a side. Unfortunately for Russia, China may be forced to pick the west.

Signs that China is already pivoting to the west have started to appear. Speculation was rife in late 2023 that China’s panda diplomacy (where it gifts the lease of the bears to foreign zoos) was on the way out amid worsening ties with the west.

But in mid-2024, Beijing sent more pandas to Spain and Vienna, as well as the US tech centre of California. President Xi Jinping also went on state visits to the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand to mend ties with the west.

Beijing’s Russian headache

China knows that the war has had catastrophic consequences for both Russia and Ukraine. Estimates indicate that Putin’s conflict in Ukraine could cost Russia US$1.3 trillion (£1.0 trillion) and at least 315,000 in troop casualties. So, win or lose, the post-war damage to Russia would be immense.

This is bad news for China. Not only will it have a weakened ally, but the west could then have a free hand to consolidate its resources in dealing with the “Chinese threat”. This concern isn’t unfounded. After all, a substantial portion of Americans view China as the greatest enemy of the US, and China is sometimes characterised as a member of an “axis of evil” alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea.

So, the Chinese government needs to hedge itself against becoming the “target of all arrows” (众矢之的), as the famous Chinese saying goes, resulting from Russia losing the war in Ukraine. Reviving panda diplomacy and sending China’s leaders on state visits then become tools to mend ties with the west, and serve as insurance policies.

But Nato’s criticism of China in July 2024, which echoes a similar statement by US secretary of state Anthony Blinken in late April 2024, suggest that these soft power initiatives are insufficient to appease the west.

China needs to press Russia to sue for peace with Ukraine. With this, Russia gets to preserve its national strength, while China could concentrate efforts in being the world leader in AI, and healing its ailing economy.

Economic performance

For months, China has been reeling from a real estate crisis, a volatile stock market, a massive 288% debt-to-GDP ratio, as well as high youth unemployment. And recently, Chinese government bond prices soared from increasing demand, suggesting that investors are seeking safer investment alternatives as confidence in the Chinese economy remains low.

But a battered economy isn’t the only problem the Chinese government faces. It has traditionally employed economic performance to legitimise its rule. So given the poor economic climate, Beijing needs to jump-start its ailing economy to maintain power.

However, there is one major flaw with Beijing’s economic growth strategy: it centres around exports, which relies heavily on western demand. While China has increased its exports to various regions across the world, almost 30% of its exports in 2023 were meant for the US and the EU.

As it stands, cracks are surfacing in Beijing’s export plans. In May 2024, the US raised tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EV) to 100%. The European Union followed suit by raising its own Chinese electric vehicle tariff from 17.4% to 37.6%, which comes on top of an existing 10% duty imposed on all Chinese electric vehicles coming into Europe.

But things may get worse for China’s economy depending on what it does with Russia. A day after Nato’s proclamation, US President Joe Biden announced that China’s continuous support of Russia will bear dire economic consequences for the Asian superpower. He added that “some of our European friends are going to be curtailing their investment in China”, alluding to what China might face if its support for Russia continuous.

For its own sake, China is hoping that the war ends with a peace settlement that favours Russia. Failing this, China’s sense of self-preservation will put its partnership of no limits with the Kremlin to the test. After all, as the quote widely attributed to the 19th century British prime minister Lord Palmerston goes, “There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”The Conversation

Chee Meng Tan, Assistant Professor of Business Economics, University of Nottingham. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

86 COMMENTS

  1. Thought provoking article. Depending on how you count some 6-7% of China’s population is Christian: ditto Taiwan where recent president Ma Yinh-jeou was a baptised Catholic. By comparison the Christian population of India is just over 2%. The Pope has visited his tiny flock in neighbouring Mongolia. While the Vatican’s recognition of Taiwan makes relations with China a challenge for them there is an argument to be made that ideology and history aside China has a more outward looking ‘western’ culture and view of its place in the world than an inward looking India.

    • Religion is and has been the greatest cause of death this (human) world has ever seen.
      And it’s all fiction.
      There are over 3000 Gods apparently and millions go to war over no proof whatsoever that any one of them has ever existed.
      Lemmings.

      • Well, that’s one view. An alternative view would be that defining features of our society such as trial by jury, innocence until proven guilty, enlightened self interest, representative democracy and sacrifice for the common good are the result of 2000 years of patient work to incorporate Christian values into the fabric of western culture.

        • Nah mate, Religion started way way way back before the one Christian example.( over 3000 gods have been invented) No amount of rubbish spoken about a single false belief will ever convince me the religion has ever been anything other than evil and toxic to the human race. It’s even worse now that it’s ever been.
          There is a large slice of intelligent people who understand this but unfortunately most humans feel the need to belong in categories.
          I’m not one of them.

          • Yes, I do subscribe to the view that humans are hard wired to seek what is unknown. We have an inbuilt need to belong and have evolved rules, family and societal structures and traditions which ensure intergenerational continuity and longterm survival of the group, the community, the nation. Faith is not toxic: it’s the irrational hope in your heart that gives you the courage to keep going when reason and logic would tell you to give up. There were plenty of people advising Churchill to throw in the towel. The 3000 gods you refer to are fleeting psychological personas. There are just 3 monotheistic religions, and I think even Muhammed was a Christian follower until he divorced his first wife. The reason I think China will turn west is that I think they have the self knowledge and self confidence to mix it. That’s a challenge for the west but a bit of conflict can be the basis of a healthy relationship. End of sermon 😀

          • Blaise Pascal, Charles de Gaule, Copernic, Christophe Colomb, all French Kings believed in God. Stallin, Pol Pot, Hitler not so much… This is one of the debate anarchist want’s to create to justify there own existence. Unfunded and irrational, but it make them feel better at the expense of Christian’s. And when we look at what they bring in… Well…

      • That’s a fallacy. It is human greed, hatred, superiority complexes, the vanity of leaders etc. The human race is flawed & we’re far from evolving forwards.

        • I lean to this view as well. Religion is primarily a convenient excuse. If it wasn’t religion it would be patriotism or something else. Remember the War of Jenkin’s Ear? That’s how trivial an excuse you need to go to war.

          • The futball war, the Emu war, WW1, the mongol invasion. None of them were about religion. The 30 years wars, France fighting against Protestant in France and against Catholic in Belgium and HRE. Religion is a pretext to war, rarely the reason.

          • A power projection, a reduction of the war between Englo-french king and true French king, a claim on former Latin land and of course the salvation of the only true faith 😉. Funny enough, various alliances did exists during this period. And crusaders were as legitimate as levantin to claim Jerusalem. I don’t think that religion was the real motives of leaders of each crusade except the first crusade and the crusade of Louis 9th. For the other guys, faith was a mean to handle rough people. Nothing more.

          • I appreciate you going into the weeds of it, but you are making the secondary consequences of the politics into the primary motivation and over complicated a response to absolutely avoid implicating religion as the reason. The many crusades were a call to arms made by the popes and Christian western powers to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land back from Muslim control and then defend it, irrespective of who wins the jostling internal geo politics of it, it is a straight up religious war.

          • Well, in this occasion, it can be disputed, but alliances did exist between crusaders and Muslim party. Don’t make it look as what it was not.
            And even if you can argue in this case, what is the nature of napoleonic wars, The Hundred Years’ War, the 7 years war, ww1, ww2, mongol invasions, 1970 war, colonization? Religion plays a side role for mobilization of some people, but plays rarely the role of the reason for war. Religion is something that try to provide the backbone of a society. It is rather the lack of the moderating factor of religion that created the biggest massacres in history. How many kings, afraid to loose their divine rights have moderated their incline to violence due to religion? When we dig slightly into it, it starts to take another look. Why did kings and queen refrain from absolute power, if not for the fear of displeasing popes, or whoever held a moral ground through religion? I have countless examples in the history of France or Germany. Because religion established accountability of actions, if not on earth, later in paradise or hell, soule being judged upon actions on earth. Hence, I think it is fairly incorrect to state that religion are the biggest cause for war. Greed, power play and lack of restrain in usage of violence are the main factors. Sorry to digress so faraway from orignal topic.

          • some people on here have been on the columbia marching powder again this is NOT A SITE FOR RELIGION.

          • Even if the crusades were 100% religious (not unreasonable to argue, if you want to support the view that the Muslim expansion of their empire was religiously motivated as well), that is a relatively small exception to the wider rule: war, conflict and conquest is about power, enrichment, and glory in the vast majority of cases.
            A lot of what happened in the crusades was ugly and brutal, but in terms of how many were killed and other measurables of the impact of conflict, it’s hardly a significant event. The rise of the Roman, Mongol, Aztec, Zulu Empires (to name just 4 from different continents, the two world wars, not to mention all the other ones through history. Religion was likely practiced by most of the participants of any conflict, but the causes are far mor ‘earthy’.

          • Completely agree, if you look back on the posts you can see I am not arguing that religion is the cause of all wars, Math said it was rarely the reason (which I agree) so I tried to think of one that was largely religious and suggested the crusades. So you and Math don’t need to list all the wars, which is mos of them, that are not for religious reasons. The exceptions I’m thinking about are the ones where the Pope sanctioned or gave explicit reason for a nation to invade, for example to punish Protestants for trying to break away or the Crusades. Outside that I’m struggling to think of others.

          • My apologies, will teach me for skim reading a thread…!
            There are probably similar with other religions- sunni and Shia splits and suchlike, but you’re right that they’re a minor proportion of the whole.

          • to build on your point – WW1 ,WW2, Stalin and all the Soviet deaths, Mao and all the Chinese deaths, Roman expansion . All these deaths and conflicts were not due to religion.

      • I wonder if the greater cause of death is antibiotics. The clue is in the name, meaning against life. For example, there are 100 trillion microorganisms in the human gut and a substantial proportion are wiped out by a single dose of vancomycin. More than every human being that has ever lived. That’s a lot of collateral damage just to attack a single type of bacteria.

      • I guess you need to balance that against all the deaths from WW1 ,WW2, Stalin and all the Soviet deaths, Mao and all the Chinese deaths, Roman expansion, Mongol invasion. All these deaths and conflicts were not due to religion.

        On a side note, I do wonder if disease maybe the greatest cause of human death?

      • While I’m not really sure of Paul’s point above, I’m afraid your assertion on religion is inaccurate. While many (maybe even most) people involved in conflicts throughout history may have worshipped something- they have fought for other reasons than the deity they worshipped.
        As an example (of many) published pieces of historical research, the Encyclopaedia of Wars lists over 1700 wars throughout history; only 123 were defined as its cause being religion/ religious belief.

      • You would think so. Interesting that the Pope has visited neighbouring Mongolia and is visiting Indonesia this week. The Catholic church has done deals with CCP on appointment of its bishops which many in the church have characterised as selling out to China. There is regular conflict between Chinese and Philipine OPVs in contested waters. Looks to me Francis is working hard to maintain dialogue with China. Diplomatic relations with the Vatican were severed when the communists came to power . The vatican wants to get an envoy in Beijing- something like the ‘Resident Papal Representative’ they negotiated in Vietnam. All very tricky since official diplomatic relations are with the ROC in Taiwan. The latest Religious Freedom report ranks China PRC as one of the worst offenders.

    • Latest post of his stated he was Scottish. It varies from profile to profile though, he was a Welsh Priest for a while and also frequently popped up as Ulya who was a Female from the Tarter region. prior to that he was an ancient Greek philosopher and more than likely many other things other the years.
      JoninMK was another, there is a pattern.
      No doubt he’ll come along in a bit and provide the evening’s entertainment.

      How are you enjoying the School holidays Toby ?

      • I’m not sure they are the same person to be honest.
        I don’t think anyone would just change the thing they argue for like that (even just from pro-Russian to pro-Chinese), and there was a big gap between Ulya and JBD.
        I wasn’t around at the same time as JohninMK so don’t know exactly, but none of them have the same style; Ulya wrote good English with mistakes and JBD produces his standard gibberish.
        Holidays are fine, I’m spending too much time kicking my heels though. Going on holiday soon so that should relieve the boredom. Really need to be back at school with something to concentrate on.

  3. Yes, it would be in China’s economic interest to side with the West, their wealth depends on it. It makes no sense to slaughter the cash cow.

    • I hope we’ll all(in the West) come down on China hard when they attack Taiwan, as well as all they’ve done recently bullying everyone over the SCS, genocide v the Uighurs, HK crackdown etc. The CCP is no friend of the west & only seeks world domination. We must bring much of our manufacturing back from China or at least shift it to far friendlier countries.

    • A very interesting article indeed.

      Food for thought. When push comes to shove, China will hang Russa out to dry in my opinion.

      They will make a hard nosed business decision and go with the side that provides more business and fuels their economy, ie, the west.

  4. China is only where it is today due to it’s trade with (mostly) the west. Apparently China’s population is set to decline disastrously in the next 75 years from it’s current 1.4 billion down to just 700 million whilst the western countries will expand at a staggering rate.
    ( I read it on here so it must be true)
    Any war with the west is rather hard to imagine from any logical of financial view.

    • Demographics are fascinating when looking at future strength or weaknesses of countries. China is coming to the end of its population high point, at present it is still growing but at about 0.2% and dropping rapidly. The 1 child per couple policy has massively backfired as China also has a long standing preference for Male Baby’s. It’s a long term Train crash of a dwindling population of working / military age with ratio of 112 male to 100 female and is matched by a rising number of OAP who are living longer.
      Russia is in an even worse position and Putin is facing a demographic cliff edge, made worse by emigration of its youngest and brightest.

      Weirdly the West is heading the other way and one of the best for growth is the USA, with 0.6% growth pa. UK is 0.44%, France 0.2% and Germany is -1.2%.

      • I’m wondering if the western growth (which is less than it was historically) is off immigration and folk living longer? The Western family unit trend appears to be smaller families.

        • That’s exactly what it is. The fertility rate in most Western countries has been sat at or below replacement level for years, in many cases decades, yet many nations continue to grow at reasonably prodigious rates.

          The UK’s fertility rate has been below replacement level since the 70s, and our population briefly plateaued between about 1970 and 1985 before it began to grow again at an increasing rate. Today the population is roughly 20% higher than it was in the 80s, despite too few children per woman.

          Ultimately, its a big reason why Blair opened us up so fully to the EU, and why even the Tories have half-arsed stopping immigration: its new, taxable workers coming in that are sustaining the working population.

    • it is true. The issue is trying to undo what has become a Chinese societal norm and value, the one child family unit. Still, I can fix this for China…send them the illegal “refugees” from Europe. Everyone wins!

      Seriously though, de population is a developing trend in the west as well, with fewer children family units. Looking at the glass half full, it likely to be good for the planet.

  5. China flourished under the western led rules based global order for decades and frequently saw the Soviets and Russia as the hostile actor they are. It’s only under Xi that things have changed and the Wolf Warrior diplomacy he has enacted.

    However you write about China as if it’s a rational actor able to see its self interest and make policy decisions to achieve long term goals. This is no longer the case. It’s an autocratic, authoritarian regime now beholden to the thought and will of a single man.

    In this man’s vision all nations must bow to China as the Middle Kingdom and the only way to make that a reality is to destroyer the western led global order.

    They can’t militarily beat the west so they will try and economically cripple it first.

  6. The current status quo is dependant on global climate changes. In the short term, the alliances of East v West will continue regardless of weather. However, in five to ten years the deterioration of our climate may redraw the current military divides. China has experienced some worrying extreme weather recently, which shows no signs of reducing. The Chinese people will want its government to do something significant to the infrastructure to ensure matters don’t worsen. Obviously, climate change applies across the board and few experts know just what the outcome of worsening weather will have on the disposition of military and political interests. I believe climate change will have a considerable effect on the military balance as more domestic budgets are stressed by the huge costs of protecting populations. The bigger the population and land mass, the greater the stress will be on fiscal management and military budgets?

    • With climate change that nice empty bit of Russia that is north of the Chinese boarder looks increasingly nice to live in.

      • Exactly, the scenarios are endless and I think the worsening weather will be the game changer and not mankind. The problem we have is convincing those who plan our futures who probably don’t factor climate change into their calculations.

  7. This contibutor seems hugely naive. China has been waging protracted, serious grey-zone warfare against the West for decades & is a long standing ally of Russia. No one in the military, govenment etc seriously doubts that. They have an amabition to destroy liberal democracies & freedom worldwide, partly because of their fear & paranoia that such things could bring their own tyrannical grip on power down.
    The CCP likes to sugar coat its evil designs with lies & deflections, but its acts are far louder than its propaganda. Maybe some time in the futue she’ll attack Russia, but in the short to medium turn she’s a firm friend of Russia. More fool us to allow so much of our manufacturing to be off shored to China-Feeding the beast that tries to consume us.

    • They make a huge amount of money trading with the West. War would destroy that strong source of revenue, so why would they do that ?

      • When they perceive that they have a chance to become the global hegemon?

        Or when they see it as their last chance before their population collapses.

        They are not our friends or even a potential ally.

  8. China only cares insofar as it benefits the needs of the aims and objects of the Chinese communist party and Xi…that’s it they will use any and all methods to achieve their aim..which is the unification of china..for the west to believe anything is else is completely Naive, so called Panda politics is nothing more than one facet of Chinese political warfare.

    After all a key part of winning using political warfare is if you achieve your aims and your enemies armies never come into play its a win win….as long as the west contest chinas right to Taiwan it will come to a conflict…wealth and suffering is irrelevant over the need for unification..infact wealth creation is simply a tool to help achieve that…this is a communist state not a capitalist one.

  10. “Pick a side” I don’t think China plays childish Western games!!! The way the media report this you’d think they were playing a game of football!

  11. The greed of the West has allowed China to rise to its dominate position with the West having ever so much produced there. They steal tech to copy it for their own means and the West has allowed it to happen all about the profit margin those in power want and never mind the realities of real life for all.
    The World needs to change as the future is dark and we will all loose in the end.
    The Cold War killed of the power in the USSR as they could not afford it and China will go the same way.

  12. There’s main lining bleach and blatant disinformation. The writer is being referred to the security service.

    I respect that UKDJ have published the article, however, the contents are contrived bollards and perhaps the contributor should go and live in China.

  13. I’m fairly sure Xi Jinping did not do a state visit to Australia in mid 2024.

    Perhaps the author confuses this with Anthony Albanese’s visit to China in late 2023, or the Chinese premier visiting in 2024.

  14. There seem to be a number of problems here. The West tends to organise themsleves (at least from a military perspective) by willing democracies. An extention to NATO might well one day be a worldwide organisation but only for Countries demonstating democratic values. Indeed many of the countries in the Asia Pacific region will see China as their main threat. This is not being helped by Chinese militarisation.

    Anyone sensible will see that Russia failed to win the Ukraine conflict within the first few weeks of it starting. The conflict will end with serious damage to Russia proportionate to the length of the conflict. Self preservation for Putin is the only reason it continues. China must be aware by now that armed conflict with the West tends to end in Western countries not buying your products.

  15. Bit like saying Nazi Germany would be a friend & ally of Poland c1938.

    CCP has ben waging grey zone warfare against the west & her free neighbours for decades. Only getting bolder & stronger.

  16. Their values are greatly antithetical to ours, and they’re still actively working to sabotage and compete with the West, no good will come of getting in bed with them. A couple of animal cultural attaches and a touch of glasnost driven by economic desperation doesn’t mean anything.

  17. The issue with US foreign policy is it always aims to isolate competitors or regimes that don’t align with its trade interests. However I can’t name a single time that this hasn’t resulted in the other nation becoming more extreme.

    The west needs to embrace China and politically work with it. History tells us that as a nation becomes more wealthy, the population moves towards democracy as the rich can no longer control the poor.

    It also happened with Russia, the west isolating putin gave him the political power to blame the west and use it as an excuse to invade Ukraine.

    Same with places like north Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria etc etc. The current approach isn’t working and is purely for show.

    Not saying there isn’t a need for regime change in all these countries but the current approach isn’t achieving it.

    • History does not tell us nations automatically move to democracy when they become wealthier…that was the premise of neoliberalism and the end of history it’s what has put the west in peril ..china has become vastly more wealthy than it did before and its moved to increased central control it is a communist state and has no interest or intention of being anything other than a communist state.

      as for history, Japan in the early 20c was a nation growing in wealth and power it did not become a democracy, it launched a campaign of imperialism, the Germany of the 1930s had a massive economic explosion..it simply doubled down on fascism…the gulf states have not become democratic even though they are some of the wealthiest nations on earth per capita.

      when we see democracy take hold it was because of western influence forcing it and generally because the western democracy nations invaded…the vast majority of the world does not actually like western liberal democracy.

        • Every single oil rich Arab state….and your assumptions that wealth trickles down is incorrect..that’s a function of democracy linked with market economies…self forming democracies with true universal suffrage have literally taken around 800 years to form with very slow changes in cultural norms and expectations…with true democracies only existing for around 100 years of human history. Every new democracy ( none European) was a creation forced by conquest.

          • Arab states the wealth isn’t trickling down. But the Arab spring tells us that things are on a knife edge there and it’s only a matter of time that the ruling class will be kicked out and democracy take over.

            Look at how democracy started in Europe, it was all by civil war, caused by the middle class being unhappy being trodden on.

          • Sorry Steve your completely wrong on your assessment there, if those monarchies fall it will be a fall into theocracy..Jordan is the most at risk and its not a democratic movement it is at risk from…its from the same movement as we have seen in Iran…almost all revolutionary movements that have occurred have not lead to democracy, they lead instead to another form of dictatorship…the only ones in history that have lead to democracy were linked to the fall of the USSR and essentially that occurred in eastern European nations…they are the only case.

          • History says otherwise, the entire european history was the ruling class headed by a monach falling through a unhappy middle class resulting in civil war and democracy.

            My point is sanctions and isolation have been in place in Cuba/Iran etc for multiple decades, is the world safer or less safe due to it, its pretty clear the answer. In the case of Iran we are almost talking 50 years and cuba over 60, has there not been enough time passed to demonstrate they don’t have the desired effect.

            Islamic state etc only happened because they were able to use the hatred of the west as a way to control the people, if that hatred was removed then it would have not.

            At the very least it is worth a try as the current appraoch is clearly not working.

          • Couple of points.. there were no European revolutions that created democracies..until the break up of the Soviet Union, they simply removed one dictator and replaced with another. The two English revolutions did not create a democracy, the French Revolution did not recreate a democracy. The Russian Revolution did not create a democracy, the Spanish revolution did not create a democracy, the Greek revolution did not create a democracy…even the much vaunted land of the free was not actually recognisable democracy after the revolution ( only white land owning males could vote..)

            China is not going to suddenly become the friend of the west just because we are nice to them..they may agree not to go to war if we give them everything they desire ( which is essentially the entire china seas and becoming the leading hegemonic power).

            these countries are not going to become democracies their leaders have no interest in letting them and their leaders have absolute control

            china is one example

            Xi has complete control of the 205 members of the central committee.
            the 205 members control the 1million members of the Chinese communist party
            the 1 million members of the Chinese communist party control

            3 million political warfare operatives
            3 million international security personal
            3 million military personnel
            every single Chinese company, is accountable to the communist party in law and every company has a shadow board made up of communist party members who will take over running the company at the will of the party..

            China does communism far better than the Soviets ever did, they have also developed a cult of belief systems that you are obliged to follow and is taught in schools…essentially the cult of Mao ( a man who let millions of Chinese people simple starve to death in a social experiment).

            China is never becoming a democracy, it’s population has no interest in democracy and sees themselves ( part of the cult is around Han exceptionalism) as the natural world leaders..they will not ever join nor be part of a western liberal world order.

            But what china noted with the fall of the Soviet Union is you cannot allow the capitalist states to out compete you..so they pretended to join the world order, all the while they have been waging a political and mercantile war against the west…be in no doubt the Chinese see political warfare as the primary domain in warfare…kinetic action is secondary after you gain the political warfare advantage…and the have been waging war on the west with a 3 million strong political warfare force…we are not a peace china does not think we are at peace, china is at war with the west, it’s simply a type of warfare that the west is poor at countering..I would suggest reading Ma, his papers on warfare are an eye opener, “on protracted war” is very digestible. the thing is china is still fighting the war that Mao describes, and it will be until it gets what it thinks china deserves…the destruction of the republic of China and its reintegration into china, complete dominion over all the china seas and becoming the world hegemonic power…it will fight a war to get these, it already is.

            kissinger said it best “for the first time in our history, we face the stark reality that the challenge is unending.”

            The insane hubris that says democracy is the ultimate form of government and all nations will follow is just the worst of western centric tunnel vision, my favourite quote in regards to the nonsense inspired by Fukuyama and the end of history

            “Pity poor Francis Fukuyama. When dolphins play around Nelson’s column, the English Channel laps at Highgate Heath, and war–painted tribes battle for control of the Pennine Way, Fukuyama will be remembered as the man who declared that history ended in 1989.”

  18. China will always be for china. We’re deluding ourselves if we think they will ever side with the west.

    For sure they would likely stab Russia in the back for access to the resources in Russia’s sparsely populated far east. But that doesn’t mean they are on “our side”.

  19. rocket boy aside, after the mess Russia has .ade if things in Ukraine who’d even want to be allied to them? Hungary, Bulgaria? They’re still cozy with Putin.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here