Wondering if any geopolitical experts on HN can take a stab at explaining this move? From my rudimentary understanding, China was (has been) allied with Russia behind the scenes in this move against Ukraine.
Is this a hedge to maintain a good reputation and a good working relationship with the world by using this action as a: "Hey, look we helped Ukraine in its time of need"?
> China has refused to describe Russia's activities in Ukraine as invasion.
Russia surprised China with its invasion timing & planning, in particular the mismanagement that turned this from a regional thing into a major international incident, which is now causing a lot of embarrassment due to their mutual cooperation. They don't want to discard friendship with Russia over this, but at the same time it looks bad all around, right at the time when China is pushing hard to become the new moral, economic, and cultural center of the world.
China isn't going to assist Ukraine directly, of course, nor is it going to push hard to back Russia. But backchannel humanitarian aid always looks good, and can't be criticised. Plus it helps to drive the point home that Putin has embarrassed them and they don't like that.
>Russia surprised China with its invasion timing & planning, in particular the mismanagement that turned this from a regional thing into a major international incident
It seems like China was caught off guard by the scale, like many other people. Possibly even most of the Russian government.
The assumption by almost everyone was that Russia would recognize the separatist regions that were already essentially owned by Russia. But instead they dropped paratroopers and sent tanks straight to the capital of a European country with 45 million people.
> But instead they dropped paratroopers and sent tanks straight to the capital of a European country with 45 million people.
One has to wonder how much of that difference in "geopolitical expectation" vs "strategic reality" comes down to military decisions around geography?
Geopolitically it would make sense for Russia to only go into the separatist regions and reinforce them, after all that's been their publicly stated goal since the beginning, such a "short-range invasion" into territories who are already mostly pro-Russian would have been a rather quick and done deal.
But from a military strategic perspective these areas might not be very good defensive positions long term, especially when the prospect is anything that involves masses of NATO forces. While just bit further West the Dnieper presents a very convenient geographical barrier, with Kyiv sitting right in the middle of it.
Ye well the war-war feel of the invasion really suprised me. After watching tank after tank roll over the border on some webcam I was not very cocky a couple of borders away.
But still I didn't grasp the scale of it until paratroopers helidropped at some airport. The risk in such a manouver is insane and was really a scarier insight that this is a real war than rows of tanks.
I really thought the "peacekeeping force" Russia sent in to separatist territories was it and what the US had been warning against.
My understanding is Xi knew of the invasion well-ahead, and actually told Putin to delay it, to not interfere with the Beijing Olympics. This might partly explain the logistical problems the Russians are having: when they first started massing combat power, they didn't plan to have 150,000+ guys sitting around in the winter for quite this long.
Yes he did know, sorry if I wasn't clear enough. The issue is that it was bungled horribly and turned into an international incident when it shouldn't have.
TBH I'm still surprised Russia didn't employ salami tactics, taking the breakaway regions while holding troops on the Ukrainian border as a deterrence to interfere, and to warn them away from NATO.
But then again, word on the street is that Putin really did believe that Ukrainians consider themselves Russian at heart and would welcome him.
I mean "regional" as in like Crimea, where the West talks up a bunch and imposes some sanctions that Russia shrugs off, but otherwise nothing comes of it.
The point is that in Putin's eyes, Ukraine should have put up a token defence at best before succumbing to the will of the people to rejoin Russia. It was most definitely NOT supposed to turn into this shitshow that forces countries and multinationals alike to choose sides.
And now America is going to milk it (much to Poland's consternation) by allowing this assault to continue, knowing full well that Putin is trapped and can't retreat lest he lose his head over it. So Russia will bleed herself dry over the next 1-2 months in an impossible war as he grasps at straw after straw until someone puts him out of his misery. Russia will be neutralized for decades to come (possibly forever), the cold warriors will rejoice, and Eastern Europe will join a West-centric alliance that can help defend against China's aimed rise to supremacy.
At least that's the plan. But China is no slouch when it comes to geopolitics and intrigue. Belt and road took a hit, but it's far from out.
I heard this theory as well that the U.S. and uk see this as a win. So far probably true, but this can very easy and up in nuclear war if Putin is pushed too far. Putin is obviously the only aggressor here, but I think he was baited and cannot understand how he fell for it. He must have been delusional enough to think the Russian troops would be welcomed with open arms.
He's been acting strangely for a few months now, and is not the same cool, strategic Putin of old. So yeah, any attempt to gauge his state of mind is going to be that much less accurate.
That's why the West has refused to impose no-fly zones, and why America refused to allow Poland to play pass-the-mig-29 via Rammstein. There must be no perceived direct American military involvement. This has to look like Russia digging her own grave if there's ever to be a hope of him being quietly retired.
Russia tried salami tactics in Georgia in 2008 after NATO looked to expand there.
In 2021 NATO decided Georgia was still on the table (along with Ukraine), demonstrating that small actions aren't enough to stop expansion.
Also, simply pausing the official NATO process with Ukraine was insufficient, because the US was already giving a billion dollars of arms plus training to Ukraine independent of it's NATO status.
It is more like big guys like US and Russia are swearing at each other, they push Ukraine around, now he is bleeding, China wants nothing to do with it, so provided some medicine. Now everyone suddenly find China to blame. Very nice. China didn't invade Iraq, and China didn't invade Ukraine, now China is the bad guy.
In which case it might be worth orders of magnitude more - basic stuff in China is way cheaper than in the West, and here they can also bypass all the usual middleman.
Exactly. I don't understand west's point. They are not going to fight, and they will just supply weapon to make the war bloodier. And now they are pushing Poland to have direct conflict with Russia.
They supply weapons so that Ukraine can defend. And one of the things we now know is that Russian army is a laughing stock. They can be dangerous to civilians though, thus the need for SAMs.
Given that India, China and a bunch of other countries do not condemn the invasion nor participate in the sanctions against Russia, most of the world, in terms of population, is actually not on the "western side" of this conflict.
My guess is the Red Cross decided on the donation, and the CCP jumped on it, to take the credit, and deflect from their own lack of action - the announcement does appear to be from the foreign ministry.
Supporting evidence is that the amount is paltry, even insulting, as a govt donation, so either they were rushed into 'sponsoring' the existing announcement, or they are sending a message of barely even token aid.
I assume that Chinese oligarchs had taken good lessons about the fate of Russian oligarchs properties in the western countries (and specially about their money movements being watched more closely).
Maybe they realized that it surprised people that they did support Russia the directly. Many had no illusions about that, but would have expected their statements towards the invasion to be more diplomatic.
This is Chinese Red cross and not China but this is very similar to what one more friend of Russia, India is doing. They have also sent in humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian aid helps you support people and not help in the defense of Ukraine, so Russia won't mind.
Also, compared to China's GDP, this is nothing when you compare it to other countries.
Yeah I'd like to think that too, but the article mentions in its first paragraph that this aid was announced by the 'Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.'
So in this case it doesn't seem like they're different.
China is essentially pacifist. And it’s not just their politics; it’s how Chinese - the actual people - feel. Invading anyone just isn’t their thing.
So, they are quite unhappy with Russia’s invasion, but they can’t join US sanctions, because US. Instead they’ll probably sanction Russia silently, and then buy out Russian industry for peanuts.
> Only if you believe in propaganda instead of looking at the facts. Can you tell me what offensive actions against Taiwan China has actually made?
You're clearly ignoring facts. They have increasingly frequently breached Taiwan's airspace with attack aircraft, which is a crystal clear threat that nobody can confuse (which is the point). And when they're not airspace breaches, they're as close as they can get to it in order to torment/bully Taiwan.
January 22: "Taiwan reports new large-scale incursion by Chinese warplanes. The 39 planes warned away from the island’s air defense zone were the most on a single day since October."
China has also directly threatened to force Taiwan into reunification as needed. The threat of force is an offensive action. If I threaten to invade my neighbor's house to take their property, that's an offensive action, it's not mere speech. If I threaten to kill my neighbor (which is what a forced reunification entails to one degree or another), that is an offensive action, it is not mere speech.
"China’s Xi threatens Taiwan with force but also seeks peaceful 'reunification'"
I consider the threat of violence to be violence, so I'm with you, China commits aggressive offenses against Taiwan by threatening anexation. But, a significant nit I have to pick is that China doesn't violate Taiwanese airspace. Doing that could be an act of war and may get a plane shot down. They enter Taiwan's ADIZ, which span Taiwanese airspace, over international waters and even covers about 2/3 of China's Fujian province. ADIZ isn't airspace. It's just the zone that Taiwan monitors.
“Chinese people don’t attack other Chinese people. We are willing to use the greatest sincerity and expend the greatest hard work to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification”
The West must really have a stranglehold on the message, because I've searched and searched for that complete quote, and the only result that comes up is this very comment that you've made.[1]
> "Chinese people don’t attack other Chinese people. We are willing to use the greatest sincerity and expend the greatest hard work to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification."
According to their words, China strives for peaceful unification, but there's little chance that can be achieved. Taiwanese people overwhelmingly reject unification, only 7.4% of the population prefer unification now or anytime in the future. The predominant preferences are 'status quo' and 'status quo but move toward independence'.[2] A vanishingly tiny minority (2.8%) identify themselves as Chinese, and they really are: Boomer Chinese refugees that fled to Taiwan after they lost the civil war. In decades past they were more influential as they essentially were a single-party occupational government thrust onto a people that didn't speak Chinese and hadn't been under "Chinese" (neither ROC nor PRC) governance since the Qing Dynasty. But as they die off, the vast, and growing, majority (62.3%) identify as Taiwanese, not Chinese, not both, just Taiwanese.[3]
> "But if separatist forces for 'Taiwan independence' provoke us, force our hand or even cross the red line, we will be compelled to take resolute measures."
That huge majority would most likely vote for independence in a referendum, except for the threat of invasion. The Chinese propaganda quoted above would have you believe that "separatist forces" are some radical minority, or outside agitators, but in fact they are they overwhelming majority of Taiwanese. They begrudgingly choose to maintain the status quo and continue to work slowly towards independence by forming stronger ties with other countries, asserting national identity, and decoupling their economy from China, rather than immediately declaring independence, because that would cross the "red line" and trigger "resolute measures." Do you sincerely believe that the Chinese "resolute measures" are not war? This isn't just quoting Western propaganda. I live here and talk to people every day. Practically no one likes China or wants to unify with then. The 'status quo' people I meet typically have two reasons: they enjoy the freedom of living in a liberal democracy and fear they will lose it if they insist, so it's better to quietly enjoy it, OR, they have economic interests in maintaining the status quo. That is, they are in business that benefits from cheap Chinese labor, or they sell into the massive Chinese market. I've never met anyone that didn't think the "resolute measures" were anything short of launching missiles.
> China is essentially pacifist. And it’s not just their politics; it’s how Chinese - the actual people - feel. Invading anyone just isn’t their thing.
This is nothing more than orientalism. Chinese are people, like other people, not a mythical enlightened race entirely different from everyone else on the planet. They commit war and conquer territory just like anyone else. You can call anything "internal" by fluffing up a story about inalienable, historical rights to it. In fact, their claims to Taiwan are not very compelling. The only time Taiwan and China were unified was for ~4 years after Japanese surrender during the civil war, or under the Qing. The Chinese themselves considered the Qing to be a foreign occupation of Tatars, so you could say that Taiwan and China were co-occupied. Before the Qing administered the coastal areas, a Ming renegade established a kingdom that ruled present-day Tainan for 20 years. He had fled the Mainland after the fall of the Ming to the Qing, and hope to restore the Ming (a weird echo of history with today's PRC corresponding to Qing and ROC to Ming). Before any Chinese claimed anything on the island, the Dutch and the Spanish ruled Formosa. Before them, aboriginals had been here for god knows how long, and still are.
The fact is, Taiwan is an important strategic possession for China to project its power, it's an important buffer for Japan (with who the Chinese have shared a millennium of conflict, regardless of ideology or government), and they'll make up whatever historical justification they can to support their claim. It's no better than Russian claims of protecting ethnic Russians in every country in Eastern Europe, or German claims to Sudetenland.
Are we limited to actions they have successfully carried out, or just those they threaten to? Are you implying that it’s Western/Taiwanese propaganda that China is willing to forcibly unify Taiwan and that in fact China would never consider it?
Precisely - China has been repeatedly saying they wouldn’t invade Taiwan. What you are describing is our western rhetoric built around it, which essentially assumes everything they say is a lie.
We are perversely enthusiastic towards wars. Chinese - the people, not just their government - hate war. Even if sometimes it’s not a good thing, like when declining to join economic war against Russia.
PRC had the legal right to enforce NSL in HK if city failed to do so herself, especially if lack of NSL threatened PRC security. Similarly PRC has legal right (anti secession law) to restart civil war with TW if she moves towards secession, which would threaten PRC security. Clearly PRC have reason to question current TW developments with Tsai not reaffirming 92 consensus.
TW isn't recognized as a sovereign country by anyone who can realistically intervene, so yes PRC can unilaterally and legally under UN framework decide to reunify with TW by restarting Chinese civil war that has never concluded via armstice/treaty - it won't be an invasion or annexation legally.
Xi has said over and over that if his ends can’t be achieved peacefully he will use force to unify Taiwan with China. He’s said that Taiwan independence is a red line for invasion. I’m having a hard time believing that you’re arguing in good faith while denying these facts, which can be found in Western, Taiwanese and Chinese media.
No - he said he would use force against a military intervention by another state. Followed by repeating that this won’t be used against Taiwan citizens.
So, who left that detail out - you, or the medium you trusted?
Well, I hope you're right, and as soon as the Taiwanese figure out that they've been brainwashed by US propaganda, they'll surely hold an independence referendum on the next election and China will congratulate them on their new statehood.
Is it propaganda that China blocks international recognition of Taiwan? That's not the same as troops on the ground but it's a pretty basic rejection of their sovereignty and it shows up all over the place accompanied by threats.
According to various polls about half of Taiwanese support maintaining current status quo; those who prefer independence are still a (growing) minority.
This alone, when compared with your assumptions, shows the rift between reality and western media rhetorics.
If you're familiar with the polls, you should also know that this issue is more complicated than how you're portraying it. The status quo isn't miserable so it's unsurprising that many people want to avoid forcing changes which have potentially disastrous downsides. That makes it important to specify exactly which polls you're referring to and what the options are.
Here's a good chart to consider for the history percentages of people who identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese or both. Clearly that has been moving solidly in the direction of an independent identity:
That shows a more complicated position: support for either immediate unification or independence has been a minority position for a long time but “maintain status quo, move towards independence” has grown from ~8% to 25% with a notable spike starting in 2019 and a decline in both “maintain status quo, decide at later date” and “maintain status quo, move toward unification”.
To be fair, they don't violate Taiwanese airspace. They enter Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone, and Taiwan scrambles jets in preperation to intercept if they violate airspace. But they have periodically threatened to do a flyover to assert their claims.
Why would an offense from 150 years ago justify the enslavement and torture (revocation of all human rights by a dictatorship) of a free people today? It obviously doesn't.
The only reason HK wasn't Chinese for 150 years, was that the British very much did use offensive military action to take it from China.
That would be the actual example of using offensive military action to take over other countries territories, but it was Colonial Britain doing it, taking away territories from China.
To get that territory back China did not invade HK with an military offensive, so you using HK as an example for such a thing happening is just weird and completely opposite to what actually happened with HK.
Adding some pointless fluff about "enslavement, torture, human rights" and all the usual memes does not detract from that point, it's just moving the goalpost, it's trying to evoke emotions over a situation that international law wise is quite unspectacular.
It's also historically revisionist, as it implies British HK didn't start out as a colony very much based on enslavement and exploitation, not out of some grander ambition to "bring human rights and democracy!" to the people of HK.
The communists kept HK around to facilitate some trade with the west as it closed off from the world (otherwise they could have easily “liberated” it in the late 60s). With the opening of China by the 80s, a UK ruled HK didn’t make sense to the PRC anymore.
HK never had a legitimate claim to independence being a colony. Taiwan is a completely different case since it is ruled by locals (Chinese) rather than some colonial overlords.
Revocation of all human rights? You aren’t mistaking China and North Korea, are you?
Also, we don’t need to look 150 years back. It’s enough to look at current statistics from American penitentiary system to notice continued race-based mass oppression, and to some extent (fortunately slowly winding down) literal slavery in private prisons.
Is this a hedge to maintain a good reputation and a good working relationship with the world by using this action as a: "Hey, look we helped Ukraine in its time of need"?
> China has refused to describe Russia's activities in Ukraine as invasion.