Posted on 11/04/2022 8:24:57 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The past year or more has seen China’s position on the world stage change quite a bit. The nation’s increasingly aggressive stance toward Taiwan and the rapid expansion of its military and economic influence across the Pacific has left many western nations on edge. And, of course, China’s continued support of Russia during the invasion of Ukraine puts them at odds with all of NATO and the rest of our allies. That’s why it was rather surprising to see German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flying to Beijing this week to meet with Xi Jinping. Scholz clearly wanted to talk about renewed trade deals and economic partnerships with the Chinese, but he couldn’t avoid bringing up Ukraine and the need to end the ongoing war there. Even more surprising was Xi Jinping’s reported decision to agree with him and call for peace as well. Or did he?
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday for a one-day visit that has drawn criticism over China’s tacit support for Russia in its war on Ukraine and lingering controversies over economic ties and human rights issues.
In his opening remarks, Scholz referred directly to the conflict that has created millions of refugees and upended world food and energy markets, saying, “We come together at a time of great tension,” according to German news agency DPA.
“In particular, I want to highlight the Russian war against Ukraine, which poses many problems for our rules-based world order,” Scholz was quoted as saying.
Scholz also touched on global hunger, climate change and developing world debt as “important issues,” DPA reported.
We’ll get to Germany’s position in all of this in a moment, but the major question is whether or not we’re seeing a shift in China’s position regarding Ukraine. Some of the headlines relating to this meeting definitely seemed to suggest that China is now pushing for an end to the conflict, but Xi’s specific statement seems a lot more vague.
What he actually said was, “As influential powers, China and Germany should work together in times of change and chaos to make more contributions to world peace and development.”
The phrase “times of change and chaos” might be a reference to Ukraine, but it could just as easily be a reference to Taiwan’s stubborn streak of independence and open cooperation with the United States. Similarly, “world peace and development” is one of those gauzy, generic things that world leaders regularly say. That’s a far cry from Xi Jinping specifically taking the stage and telling Vladimir Putin that he needs to pull out of Ukraine and send his troops home. I think people may be reading far too much into this.
As far as Germany goes, Scholz appears to be ready to weaken the western alliance against Russia in the interest of bolstering his country’s economic situation. He did call out the Russian invasion as having “posed many problems.” But notice that he didn’t travel to Beijing with a group of German elected officials and diplomats. He brought with him a dozen major German business leaders, including the heads of Volkswagen, BMW, BASF, Bayer, and Deutsche Bank.
This trip was intended to expand Germany’s economic portfolio and nothing more. That’s obviously understandable because bolstering the German economy is part of the job that Scholz signed up for. But he’s also clearly not planning to hold China accountable for its ongoing support of Vladimir Putin, to say nothing of the ongoing wave of human rights abuses committed by the Chinese Communist Party.
I’ll be quite surprised if this new engagement between Germany and China winds up moving the needle substantially in Ukraine. If anything, the position of NATO and its allies may be a bit weaker this morning than it was yesterday.
So, essentially, Xi is telling Russia that Putin screwed up and the Belt and Road is the best way to control the Third World.
“the Russian war against Ukraine, which poses many problems for our rules-based world order,”
Ahhhh... the old “rules based order” again LOL. Putin mentioned that nobody agreed to these rules, they are not codified anywhere, they change according to the needs of DC/EU/WEF, and that only one side has to follow them.
He has a point.
When China goes into Siberia to maintain the peace, nukes will get interesting.
Chicom idea of peace is like Islam — submission.
Scholz China pandering is reportedly not popular in Germany.
peace is easy, the Russians need only LEAVE!
Xi wants peace? I thought the communist definition of peace, means the absence of struggle against communism?
2. Germany has figured out the USA has sold Germany out.
3. China wants to protect it’s Western boarder with Russia, better to deal with the Devil you know.....
I don’t read that into it at all. He said to Germany “As influential powers, China and Germany should work together in times of change and chaos to make more contributions to world peace and development.” That’s a politician statement. It has a bunch of words but doesn’t mean anything.
Sounds like this article needs a fact checker.
China is desperate for food
🎯
Germany is imploding.
XI simply explained why and how that came to be.
Poor Scholz. Rock & a Hard Place come to mind. How to break it to Biden that NATO is NUTTO.
Xi is happy for Putin to destroy Russia. Putin is going to leave Russia a mess of weak states.
This will be like the Chinese Han dynasty sitting out the Xianbei, Xiongnu threats until the northern barbarians break up
Nope. What actually occurred was Xi Jinping lectured Scholz on German the errors of its ways.......
I have no idea how you took that from the article, or a personal review of the overall situation.
As the article states at the end, this was strictly a business meeting between Germany and China. It was needed because German industries can no longer produce or sell products at the same clip as before, due to their loss of local energy supplies.
I would equate it to the Japanese manufacturers visiting he US, to discuss building Japanese car factories here, to help sell products in the US. Except in this case, the new factories will be built in China, instead of the US.
Maybe the Germans know more about who actually blew their pipeline up, which has helped them decide who their main business partners should be going forward.
As the political pendulum swings back the other way in the U.S. I see the Chinese as opportunists. Their convictions are no stronger than any other state.
Why not?
The move carries no weight. Xi can pretend to be doing something while actually doing nothing
Xi’s just worried that Putin is giving “territorial acquisition” a bad name.
Russia must be hurting or xi is afraid Putin won’t survive…anyway ending that war would be a positive thing…
Scholz, like Biden is strongly suspected of being in Xi’s pocket.
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