China’s Watching Putin, But What Does She See

 

China faces a genuine conundrum: she desperately wants to take Taiwan, has always maintained that this island nation is nothing more than a breakaway province that belongs unequivocally to the Peoples’ Republic of China and clearly has the military might to subdue Taiwan’s very substantial military. It would be bloody, with heavy losses on both sides, but as Mao Zedong is quoted as he committed PRC forces to back North Korea seven decades ago, “People we’ve got.” Oh, and there’s one more tiny detail, Taiwan has a mutual defense treaty with the United States that almost got abrogated during the Trump administration; that treaty would require US forces to fight to preserve Taiwan if attacked.

As the US military has created war game computer simulations and models in the event of a full-on PRC attack on Taiwan, the United States comes out on the short end of the stick every time. While the US has a stronger Navy and Air Force, that military capacity is spread all over the earth. What’s available in the Asia-Pacific theater does not compare with China’s regional military forces. We would be fighting literally a few miles from the Chinese mainland. Could that blossom into a nuclear holocaust? That is a possible scenario, but Chinese President Xi Jinping is watching an entirely different reaction from every sector of the earth, rallying against Vladimir Putin’s megalomaniacal attempt to annex a nation that Putin believes has always belonged to Russia. 

Putin’s economy – very small by comparison to most of the rest of the developed world – is crumbling before his eyes. His cronies, bureaucrats and even his ordinary constituents are suffering already. Ukraine has yet to face the Russian tactic of siege – surrounding large cities and cutting of vital supplies (from food and fuel to water and electricity… even medical supplies). Surrender or starve to death is the message besieged Ukrainians will hear. And face the Russian kill lists.

For Taiwan, as horrific as the Russian occupation might be, it just may be the message they want President Xi to hear… load and clear. Putin will probably be declared a war criminal, and the only way he will remain in power is with increasingly brutal repression. Does Putin sit alone at the end of that exceptionally long table to show strength… or to keep some antsy soldier, bureaucrat or even a foreign dignitary from killing him?

While the stinging global rebuke might have impressed Xi, particularly lopsided anti-Russian vote in the UN General Assembly, he is more concerned with his regional allies and foes. China has watched timid countries in Asia get less timid in recent years, some angered by his development of a manmade island, complete with a modern airfield, on the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea... and his associated claims to rights to the sea wealth around that newly minted island. The Washington Post (March 3rd) explains the changing regional dynamics: “When Japan in recent days announced an aggressive set of sanctions to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, it wasn’t just Moscow it wished to signal, according to U.S. and Asian officials… It was also China.

“Japan, not typically a sanctions hawk, wanted to ensure that Beijing drew the right lesson from Russia’s invasion of a weaker neighbor. Moscow would pay a high price… Some key countries in East Asia are joining with the West to take what is for them the exceptional step of imposing significant financial sanctions, officials and analysts say, brought together by outrage at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and concern over China’s growing aggression in the region… ‘We want to demonstrate what happens when a country invades another country,’ said one Japanese official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity…

“Not only did Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, freeze Moscow’s access to tens of billions of dollars’ worth of its currency reserves held in the central bank in Tokyo. It also joined with other Group of Seven nations and Australia to cut some Russian banks off from a global interbank messaging system known as SWIFT and freeze the assets of Russian officials and elites. It is also targeting individuals and organizations from Belarus…

“Japan’s evolution on sanctions is noteworthy. It had a tepid response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and four years later was alone among G-7 countries in declining to expel Russian intelligence officers after Moscow’s attempted assassination of a former Russian spy on British soil… Japan’s new boldness reflects its wariness of China’s growing assertiveness as well as of worsening cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan, said the Japanese official. ‘China has a bigger presence and the situation in Taiwan is more complicated and tense,’ the official said.”

Nations like South Korea and tiny Singapore have joined in the anti-Russian chorus honoring the relevant sanctions imposed by the NATO allies. “Respect for the territorial integrity of nations ‘is existential for small states like Singapore,’ the Singaporean Embassy in Washington said in a statement. Yet, not “all the countries of the Indo-Pacific have joined in. India, which has a deep interest in deterring Chinese aggression, at the same time relies heavily on Russia for defense purchases and refrained from imposing any sanctions. With the exception of Singapore, all the Southeast Asian states, which have relationships with both Russia and China, stayed away from sanctions… 

“Singapore’s choice to join sanctions on Russia was ‘almost unprecedented,’ said Bilahari Kausikan, former permanent secretary of Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The last time the city-state imposed unilateral sanctions was after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978… But Singapore’s reputation as a global financial center in the Pacific is at stake, said [Richard McGregor, senior fellow for East Asia at Australia’s Lowy Institute]. To retain its credibility, he said, ‘I don’t think they can sit out action against Russia when just about every country is taking it.’” The Post. Fresh from recent joint cooperation accord with Moscow, Xi seems slammed by how quickly Putin attacked Ukraine on a set of pretenses that no one outside his hypnotized, truth-deprived minority of ultra-believers found credible.

This could explain why China did not join in Russia’s veto of a UN Security Council censure and why he hesitated to accept the two eastern Ukrainian breakaway provinces as full-blown independent republics. As Putin’s focused attacks now clearly include civilian targets, from apartment buildings to schools and hospitals, as Putin moves towards becoming a named international war criminal, will China play the right game? Will China, in some demonstrable way, honor some of the sanctions to gain credibility with the rest of the world? In this crazy world, who knows? China has a very serious decision to make. Its own global credibility may depend on that choice.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as this horrific debacle further explodes and drags on, more and more nations and people will forever be changed by these events… if they survive.