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Ukraine’s War Viewed from China
Project Syndicate ^

Posted on 07/30/2022 3:58:35 AM PDT by FarCenter

BEIJING – Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine merely the first in a series of conflicts that will make Europe seem more like the Middle East in the coming years? A Chinese academic who requested anonymity put that question to me last week, and his reasoning showed just how differently non-Westerners view a war that is reshaping the European geopolitical order.

In speaking with Chinese academics to understand how they view the world, I have found that they start from a fundamentally different position than many in the West do. It’s not just that they are more likely to blame the Ukraine war on NATO enlargement than on the Kremlin; it is that many of their core strategic assumptions are also the opposite of our own.

While Europeans and Americans see the conflict as a turning point in global history, the Chinese see it as just another war of intervention – one that is even less significant than those launched in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan over the past 75 years. To them, the only material difference this time is that it is not the West that is intervening.

Moreover, while many in Europe think that the war has marked America’s return to the global stage, Chinese intellectuals see it as further confirmation of the incoming post-American world. To them, the end of American hegemony created a vacuum that is now being filled by Russia.

Whereas Westerners see an attack on the rules-based order, my Chinese friends see the emergence of a more pluralistic world – one in which the end of American hegemony permits different regional and sub-regional projects. They argue that the rules-based order has always lacked legitimacy; Western powers created the rules, and they have never shown much compunction about changing them when it suits their purposes (as in Kosovo and Iraq).

These are the arguments that lead to the Middle East analogy. My Chinese interlocutor sees the situation in Ukraine not as a war of aggression between sovereign countries, but rather as a revision of post-colonial borders following the end of Western hegemony. Likewise, in the Middle East, states are questioning the borders that the West drew after World War I.

But the most striking parallel is that the Ukraine conflict is widely regarded as a proxy war. Just as the wars in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon have been fueled and exploited by great powers, so, too, has the war in Ukraine. Who are the main beneficiaries? My Chinese friend argues that it certainly is not Russia, Ukraine, or Europe. Rather, the United States and China ultimately stand to gain the most, and both have been approaching the conflict as a proxy war in their larger rivalry.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 07/30/2022 3:58:35 AM PDT by FarCenter
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To: FarCenter

Get ready, the western demonizing of China is now raising it’s head. They succeeded in demonizing Russia in a very small Western world, but not in the world.

It is ironic (with Trump gone) Russia and China is our last hope and defense against the western socialists, Green deal, Great Reset….they are not buying into gay marriage, boys in girls locker rooms, men in woman’s sports, Trans XYZ’s in every government agency and school system, etc, etc, etc.something that the West is so Proud of.

Prepare for more economic, social and military defeats…..and the bad Vlad and bad Xi agenda to go into overdrive.


2 posted on 07/30/2022 4:14:06 AM PDT by delta7
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To: delta7

So far, the Global South seems to be sticking with China’s neutral position on Ukraine.

The “nonaligned nations” are continuing to be nonaligned, and most have good business and political relations with China that they are loathe to give up. China imports raw materials and food and exports manufactured goods and services back to them in a very favorable relationship.


3 posted on 07/30/2022 4:25:56 AM PDT by FarCenter
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To: FarCenter; delta7

So the Chi-Coms are now the good guys too?

“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”


4 posted on 07/30/2022 4:41:21 AM PDT by Farmerbob
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To: delta7

I have mixed feelings about that. China is beyond question the biggest threat to America both geopolitically and economically. It has corrupted much of the American elite and its influence is a key factor behind the increasingly authoritarian Left.

That said, it along with Russia is a key bulwark against the globalists. The globalist project has probably been fatally weakened by the dismal failure to bring Russia down already.

The globalists vs China is a fight I very much want to see - and like the Nazis vs the Commies or Saddam’s Iraq vs Khomenei’s Iran, its a fight I want both sides to lose.


5 posted on 07/30/2022 4:49:01 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: Farmerbob

Putin is a nationalist.

Xi is a nationalist.

Biden is a globalist.

It would help Americans if we had a government that treated US citizens as its number one priority.


6 posted on 07/30/2022 5:13:27 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: Farmerbob
So the Chi-Coms are now the good guys too?

The chin ks were never the good guys. Real Americans have been saying this for decades as the globalists pushed more and more manufacturing offshore to china. In all that time, the WEF types were praising china for its slave labor and dictatorial power over the people, and really ramped up the praise when the technology to monitor them 24/7 came online as a model for the One World Dictatorship.

Meanwhile Conservatives were horrified.

But now the Davos crowd throughout they would be the ones running the world, but has come to realize that the Frankenstein monster they were so eager to emulate doesn't need them to rule the world.

You can see this in the evolution that the publication The Economist has gone through since Trump was in office - from "Trump is a meany racist for fighting with china" to "Xi's actions are ill advised. And, hey, what about those Uihgers?" From total toungue baths of Xi to sounding the red alarm.

And it has nothing to do with protecting American Freedom. It's all about the Great Reset cult's weird, dystopian wet dreams being thwarted.

7 posted on 07/30/2022 5:27:15 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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To: FarCenter

China is run by a few thousand communist that rule the other 1.3 billion people. It is run like the mafia, with Xi Jinping as the godfather. The Chinese people are not the enemy. They want freedom too, like what they previously had in Hong Kong. The enemy is the gangster criminals that run the country with an iron fist.

In many ways, the USA is run by the mafia as well. We have the Washington DC administrative state (FBI, DOJ, CIA, DHS, etc.) who answer to no one, except maybe the puppet masters of the Clinton/Obama/Biden axis of evil regime.

They need to be taken out. Start with that first, including the criminal propagandist soldiers in the media establishment (New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, etc.). A correction is coming. Woe to be one of them when it comes. Stay tuned, this time next year.


8 posted on 07/30/2022 5:56:14 AM PDT by Flavious_Maximus
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To: FarCenter

I’ve posted this before, but it’s been a long time.

This influential leading Chinese academic has a different view from the ones in the posted article. At one point, he used a Chinese idiom to describe the foolish war in Ukraine:

“The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind”
(figurative meaning: “to pursue a narrow gain while neglecting a greater danger”)

Then says “The bigger question that the United States is unwilling to face is, who is the mantis and who is the cicada?” China is obviously the oriole. So are we the cicada or the mantis? And which is Russia? Does it matter?

Have a look at a mantis attempting to capture a cicada:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V3A7tqJoVGs

As you can see, both are large insects. The mantis is strong, and intelligent for an insect, with amazing reach, but the huge, noisy, primitive cicada is also very strong, well-armored and has an enormous wingspan. Both are likely to be damaged or weakened in such a fight. Meanwhile, the oriole stalks from behind.

Link to essay by Chinese academic Chen Feng (you’ll have to run it through Google translate. Long, but well worth the read — and keep in mind it was written back in March):

https://m.guancha.cn/ChenFeng3/2022_03_02_628308

Even though written at the very beginning of the conflict, he got so much right. Interesting to see his take on it.

Whoever “wins” this war in Ukraine, China is the real winner. I’ve been saying that since the beginning.


9 posted on 07/30/2022 6:00:34 AM PDT by CatHerd (Whoever said "All's fair in love and war" probably never participated in either.)
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To: Flavious_Maximus

The CCP reached 96.71 million members at the end of 2021.[183] It is the second largest political party in the world after India’s Bharatiya Janata Party.[184]

To join the CCP, an applicant must go through an approval process. In 2014, only 2 million applications were accepted out of some 22 million applicants.[185] Admitted members then spend a year as a probationary member.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party


10 posted on 07/30/2022 6:14:10 AM PDT by FarCenter
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To: FarCenter

Joining the CCP is not an ideological thing for most - its an economic thing. Party member have access to resources that non-Party members don’t.

The size of the party is relatively small given the 1.4 billion population. Of that number, only 7 families actually run China.


11 posted on 07/30/2022 7:14:30 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: Farmerbob

So the Chi-Coms are now the good guys too?
————-
No, but they are definitely not the bad guys in this regional conflict. The West with their immoral and war, war, war agenda are NOT the good guys.

Our woke brain dead Military leaders stated this war was necessary to “ wear down “ Russia, well, it can also be viewed by China as being used to wear down and cripple the West, which it clearly is.

So, the question, which is worse? A Russia China that opposes the West’s ways of their society, Green Deal, Great Reset, endless wars or the West’s desire to impose a Great reset, Green New deal, immoral corrupted agenda?

Answer: Like Zelensky and Vlad, both are corrupted and evil, support neither one. Calls for Peace, not war, war, war and ditch the self inflicted harm and suicide the West is performing on their own people.


12 posted on 07/30/2022 7:48:32 AM PDT by delta7
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To: Brian Griffin

“It would help Americans if we had a government that treated US citizens as its number one priority.“

No matter what is happening in Ukraine or the world, the above is what we should be concentrating on.

Many are wanting a war with Russia, but with our current civilian and military leadership, any war with a near peer enemy would be disastrous imho.

Let us get back to leadership that puts Americans first, then and only then, will we be in a position to duke it out with a near peer adversary.


13 posted on 07/30/2022 9:27:05 AM PDT by walkingdead (We are sacrificing American youth's future on the altar of our own fear. And it is a travesty.)
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