The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece by Lingling Wei today asserting that China is having second thoughts about their support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Wishful thinking?
“Since the Russian troops marched into Ukraine on Feb. 24, China has been walking what many foreign-policy experts call a diplomatic tightrope. It is locked into having to help Russia and has little interest in seeing Moscow collapse economically, while it is trying to stick to its foreign-policy principles around sovereignty and attempting to prevent its relations with the U.S. and Europe from completely collapsing,” Wei writes.
Both China and Russia see the US as their biggest adversary as Mr. Lei says.
The author’s evidence that China has misgivings is basically what follows.
The author claims China didn’t count on Moscow’s increasingly heated rhetoric on Ukraine, and is now concerned about their decision to back the invasion.
A CCP apparatchik said so.
“China’s eagerness to present a strong alignment with Russia to counter the US caused it to miss all the signs and to go in a dangerous direction,” said Yun Sun, Director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank focused on promoting peace and security.
So, what else is the Director of the “promoting peace and security” China propaganda program going to say?
What about trusting a Biden apparatchik’s opinion?
Then there’s the comments by Kurt Campbell, Biden’s senior coordinator for Indo-Pacific Policy at the National Security Council, who said on Monday during a Webinar hosted by the German Marshall Fund that the US was hoping China could play a critical role in encouraging Mr. Putin to reconsider invading Ukraine but said, “We believe they chose not to weigh in in advance.”
If they believed that, they truly are naive.
Another piece of evidence is the fact that China is buying Russian farm and energy products but is complying with the sanctions.
Lastly, the writer cites a phone call as evidence.
The WSJ’s writer’s conclusion is China is ambiguous on the Russia-Ukraine war. The article cites a phone call between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Ukrainian counterpart. Wang said, “The security of one country shouldn’t be achieved at the expense of the security of other countries. And the regional security can’t be achieved by expanding military blocs.”
To believe Wang was sincere, you must also believe China isn’t going to seize Taiwan at some point. Of course, China is claiming Taiwan is China just as Putin is claiming Ukraine is Russia.
China and Russia really didn’t like each other until the US started to poke the bear and pushed Russia into China’s arms. China loves it as both discuss an Asia-African Alliance that will bury the West.
There is a lot more to the piece but to buy into it, you’d have to buy into the evidence.
THEN THERE’S THE FEBRUARY 4 MEETING
Citing “senior Biden Administration officials and a European official,” The New York Times recently reported, “a Western intelligence report” indicated that at an early February meeting, senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials to delay their invasion of Ukraine until the Olympics were over.
That indicates top China officials knew of Russia’s plans well before the invasion.
The two leaders met on February 4 and both voiced their objections to NATO’s growth, said their partnership had “no limits,” and confirmed plans to “establish a new global order with true ‘democracy,’” the Times reported.
Western intelligence officials said the report was “credible.”
The Times’ emailed Liu Pengyu, the Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington, who responded, “These claims are speculation without any basis, and are intended to blame-shift and smear China.”
You can believe them or not, but what are the chances they discussed NATO and didn’t bother to discuss the invasion? In any case, don’t take anything either leader says too seriously.
What else was he going to say?
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