The (better) analysis on why Xi Jinping will find ways to support Putin in Ukraine -- China Boss update 3.10.23
Update
What happened.
Financial Times' Gideon Rachman last week wrote a compelling argument for why Chinese leader Xi Jinping may choose to provide lethal military support to Russia in its war against Ukraine.
In a nutshell, Rachman cited three reasons: 1) the "no limits" strategic partnership announced by Putin and Xi in February 2022; 2) the potential for poor counsel from his closest advisers (e.g. “authoritarian feedback loop”) and 3) a belief on the Chinese side “that outright confrontation with the US has already begun.”
Rachman, FT:
[In their Strategic Partnership,] Putin and Xi laid out a common understanding of the world. They both see the US as the central threat to their countries’ ambitions and political regimes. Fighting back against American power is the common task that unites them. . . . The worst-case scenario for [Xi] would be the fall of Putin and his replacement with a pro-western leader.
. . . Xi’s closest advisers might have more faith . . . that China can control the escalation risk. They will argue that, once Washington understands that Beijing will not let Moscow lose, the west will push Ukraine to make a peace settlement on terms acceptable to Russia.
. . . [Another] reason why China might risk a global conflict is bleaker. Nationalists in Beijing may believe that outright confrontation with the US has already begun. The CIA says that Xi has already instructed the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Joe Biden has said several times that the US would defend Taiwan, if it was attacked.
Rachman hit the nail on the head with his first two points. As to his third point, China Boss thinks he’s also right, but for a starkly different and more crucial reason.
Why it matters.
The Strategic Alliance
Rachman is correct to cite China and Russia’s Strategic Partnership as instrumental to any fledgling military alliance. China Boss considers what Putin and Xi have agreed to as more of a strategic alliance for several reasons. A strategic partnership is usually about the exchange of information and solutions, while an “alliance” goes beyond that. Although Oxford Public International Law describes an alliance as “a formal union,” with “economic, political, or security functions” that can “act to preserve and enhance the individual and collective power of States,” while “deter[ing] outsiders from aggressive or hostile acts,” according to Anna Michalski at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, the “strategic partnership” can be designed as a cover for or a preliminary step towards an alliance.
Michalski, SIIA:
Many strategic partnerships are set up at the initiative of a dominant actor with a specific purpose in mind. The intention behind such partnerships may be to create non-formal alliances with like-minded states in order to strengthen a particular world view or to reinforce an existing regional organization. A dominant actor may also seek strategic partnerships in order to bolster its standing in the international system and enhance its ability to influence the shape of the international environment by diffusing norms and world views to weaker or antagonistic partners.
A formal alliance is a legal concept with terms that would normally be outlined in a legal instrument, like a treaty. But Putin and Xi - both coming from dictatorships where rule of law is weak - have no need for such formalities and, most probably, decided not the use the label, both, to confuse the West and each other as to the boundaries of their commitments.
To understand how deep Xi and Putin’s relationship is, however, you need only ask why on earth two tyrants would form an alliance? By the way, Cambridge dictionary defines tyrant as “a ruler who has unlimited power over other people, and uses it unfairly and cruelly,” and the Index on Censorship, which says it is “a voice for the persecuted,” named Xi “Tyrant of the Year 2022” for his zero-Covid policy.
Index on Censorship:
“His Zero Covid policy is as barmy as it is draconian. It’s led to the deaths of many who have not been able to get urgent medical treatment, been locked in their apartments when they’ve caught fire, have taken their own lives out of desperation,” says Steinfeld.
The protests against his policy (and indeed his legitimacy) showed a kink in Xi’s armour but he responded in true autocratic style – arrests, arrests and more arrests (plus a raft of other silencing measures).
The non-profit said it could only choose one “Tyrant of the Year”, but Putin was a close runner-up.
Index on Cenorship:
Vladmir Vladimirovich Putin is the tyrant’s tyrant in more ways than one. Over the two decades he has dominated Russian politics as president and prime minister, he has set a new standard in the brutal oppression of opponents at home and abroad. His illegal invasion of Ukraine on 24 February has had a devastating effect on the global economy and turned Russia into a global pariah. But he has also been a consistent champion of other tyrants, whether it is Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, President Assad of Syria or his closest ally in the region, President Lukashenska of Belarus.
But back to the original question: Why might two power-crazed dictators, who have all the influence they want at home and then some, create an alliance? The most straightforward answer is to gain more power abroad, as a number of experts have said. But a second look might also reveal that both captains know their ships aren’t as water tight as they look, and external help has become necessary to batten down the hatch.
China has had a local crisis of confidence in its economic future, quite frankly, for years now, and, according to NATO, Putin’s been feeling the pinch since Crimea sanctions.
For the Russian economy, the sanctions are generally assessed to have helped exacerbate the macroeconomic challenges it was already facing, notably the rapid and pronounced fall in oil prices that started in the last months of 2014.
Furthermore, the combined effect of these sanctions and of the fall in oil prices caused significant downward pressure on the value of the Rouble and increased capital flight.
At the same time, the sanctions on access to financing forced the Russian state to use part of its foreign exchange reserves to shore up the sanctioned entities.
These developments forced the hand of the Central Bank of Russia, which abruptly ceased to defend the value of the Rouble and hike interest rates in December 2014.
Russia’s ban on Western food imports had a compounding effect on this challenging picture, as it led to higher food prices and hence to further inflation. This was in addition to the effect of the fall in the value of the Rouble, which had already raised the price of imported goods and services in Roubles.
Recent data confirm Russia’s entry into recession, with GDP growth of -2.2% for the first quarter of 2015, as compared to the first quarter of 2014. Recent forecasts suggest a fall in real GDP in the order of 3%-3.5% for 2015, and growth of around zero for 2016.
But what if Russia, despite those blasted Western sanctions, can latch on to China’s insatiable need for oil? And what if Xi can use Putin’s experience as a disruptor to weaken the West in order to invade Taiwan, thereby making good on his promise to achieve “national rejuvenation” while distracting the people from an ongoing economic disaster? There are a number of additional such what-ifs, but to keep this essay short, I’ll leave them for later.
Yes-men make lousy advisors
Chinese policymakers really, REALLY don’t understand Western history, law, politics or culture. The few that spend enough time in the West to be able to absorb some of that precious I.Q. have always had trouble ascending the ranks of a xenophobic party-state, and, under Xi’s reign, they’d be even more suspect. What does the party need western theorists for anyway when it can easily expand its influence abroad through economic leverage?
One of my favorite reads is Romanian Institute for the Study of the Asia-Pacific Vice President Andreea Brînză’s “China Doesn’t Understand Europe, and It Shows,” in Foreign Policy. Brînză’s cited some massively tone-deaf statements made by former Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi (now director of the Office of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Commission) during a 2020 diplomatic tour to Western Europe as an example that even China’s top envoys are clueless.
Brînză, Foreign Policy:
While world powers no longer create agreements like the Treaty of Tordesillas, the idea of spheres of influence still exists in their minds. Sixteen formerly communist CEE countries teaming up with a communist great power set off alarm bells in Brussels. The EU doesn’t want any new “Berlin Walls” and it definitely doesn’t want to swap out Russian influence with Chinese in the CEE region, creating a new Iron Curtain. The European Union’s fear of division was mainly generated by China, which failed to understand how sensitive and important this subject is for Brussels.
At the same time, China failed to understand the extent to which it would struggle to gain influence in Central and Eastern Europe, mainly due to the Russian factor. Because the CEE region has always lived in the shadow of a possible Russian threat, these countries are greatly dependent on the United States and NATO. And cecause of their dependence on the U.S. security shield, in a possible China-U.S. conflict, these countries would be very unlikely to take Beijing’s side against Washington. This theory was borne out by the thoroughgoing rejection of Huawei and its 5G technology in the CEE region. In other words, by pressing forward with the 17+1 platform, China lost goodwill with Western Europe and the EU, without winning clear victories or benefits in Central and Eastern Europe.
In essence, if Xi’s “Yes-you-can-give-Putin-all-the-lethal-weapons-you-want” men are also advising him on how to mitigate the risk of World War III - given China’s failure to grasp even the basics of European Sore Spots 101 - then we’re screwed.
World War III may have already begun
In closing, Rachman is also right to argue that China’s leader “may believe that outright confrontation with the US has already begun.” But he gets the “watershed moment” of when this might have occurred wrong in pointing to Biden’s statements on defending Taiwan.
Xi Jinping was the leader who, in 2019, stepped away from the commitment to a peaceful reunification with Taiwan. As a result, it could well be argued that it is China who has triggered any future confrontation, especially if it acts on Xi’s assertions by invading or blockading Taiwan. Doing so would change the status quo, which, in turn, would be a clear violation of the One-China Policy that was agreed to between China and the US decades ago.
The U.S. position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan remains steady and consistent with its “one China policy”: both sides of the Taiwan Strait should mutually and peacefully agree to a resolution of this as yet unsettled issue. The United States doesn’t agree with Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, nor does it agree with Taipei that the ROC is an independent, sovereign state.
. . . The [Taiwan Relations Act] sets forth the American Institute in Taiwan as the corporate entity dealing with U.S. relations with the island; makes clear that the U.S. decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means; considers any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States; mandates that the United States make available defensive arms to Taiwan; and requires that the United States maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.
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Have a great weekend.