China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly told the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas on July 3 that the country cannot afford for Russia to lose the war in Ukraine amid fears the U.S. would shift focus towards Beijing, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, citing sources familiar with the conversation.
As the war in Ukraine drags on, Wang’s reported comments suggest that Russia’s war in Ukraine may serve China’s strategic needs as focus is deviated away from Beijing’s mounting preparation to launch its own possible invasion into Taiwan.
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China has been a key ally to Russia during its full-scale war, helping Moscow evade Western sanctions and becoming the leading source of dual-use goods fueling the Russian defense industry.
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The frankness of Wang’s reported admission was greeted with surprise by EU official, according to Hong Kong-based SCMP, amid China’s past public statements in favor of a peace deal. Two sources familiar with the meeting told SCMP that they believed Wang was providing Kallas with a lesson in realpolitik during the four-hour encounter.
Wang on July 3 again reportedly rejected Western accusations that it was providing funding and weaponry to support Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly accused Beijing of providing weaponry to Moscow. On May 29, Zelensky said that China had stopped selling drones to Ukraine and Western countries while continuing to supply them to Russia.
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If Russia is successful in Ukraine, that makes it more likely that in future China will be able to carry out the same trick in Taiwan.
It’s not only that, it’s also that USA is doing the competition with China the rough way.
China is mostly building up peaceful (of the cutthroat kind, but still) economic influence, USA is mostly not countering that with the same, but just disrupting possible logistical projects beneficial to China with wars.
So they’d want, I think, to have USA at least keep applying force where it already does, allowing China to keep growing. They don’t want to do military solutions, their military is not that experienced and it’s not necessary when economically time is working in their favor.
Putin is basically mocking (or imitating) the US, it’s his inferiority complex - he thinks Russia should be perceived as some superpower of the kind of the US, and the same things to be “allowed” to it, so he does what he sees as the same things that US does. The results are secondary. While the US establishment and current, eh, leadership in turn too have an inferiority complex - they think today’s US should be as “great” or at least “reliable” in perception as the US of 1960s, except they forgot the context and why even US of 1960s needed to be what it was. The results, in foreign policy, are mostly secondary too to that, I think.
IMHO it’s because of the stagnation of the elites. The more involved wide population is into decisions, - even USSR had something reminiscing meritocracy in ministries and in industries and in the military, - the better is the quality of the whole state mechanism with its culture and elites. While the more narrow and closed it is, the more similar it is to a Hearts of Iron game.