Politics
Will China help Russia with weapons in Ukraine? There are three reasons why this might
This week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that China could be prepares to provide lethal assistance to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
This, added to that of Chinese President Xi Jinping peace initiativeand the meeting between the Chinese Foreign Minister and Russian President Vladimir Putin will cause concern among Western strategists as well as leaders of Ukraine, NATO and the United States.
Any large-scale aid from China to Russia would bring about a significant change in the war. But why would Xi consider such a move now, a year after the start of this war?
Of course, China-Russia relationship “without limits”formalized just before the war would be part of the goal of such a minor Chinese move. Three more important reasons stand out.
Three reasons why China wants to help Russia
First, the reaction to possible Chinese support for Russia will inform Chinese plans for aggression against its neighbors, including Taiwan.
It is highly likely that the Chinese government will stimulate a response from the United States and NATO to gauge their reaction to such moves. And while these are different contingencies, China wants to have some level of confidence in how the West might respond to any future aggression, including an attack on Taiwan.
Second, China has no interest in seeing the war in Ukraine end anytime soon.
Indeed, just as Iraq and Afghanistan have distracted the United States from the Pacific over the past two decades, China would rather the United States and Europe continue to supply Ukraine with their best weapons and remain preoccupied with Europe.
Such a long war, a disaster for the Ukrainian people, would be a win-win in the brutal calculation of the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army.
Finally, it is not in China’s interest for Russia to lose. As a fellow traveler in the small but mighty techno-authoritarian club, a Russian defeat would be seen as a serious challenge to Xi’s narrative of a declining West.
It could also impact the willingness of many in the “global south” to forge closer ties with China and move away from Western nations.
How could China help Russia?
It is highly likely that the Chinese have provided Russia with strategic intelligence over the past year.
While the People’s Liberation Army will have little battlefield intelligence to share, it will have collected intelligence on decision-making in Western capitals as well as intelligence on Western weapons and production levels. Much of this would have been supplied to Russia.
China has also provided economic aid to Russia through the purchase of oil and other energy sources. Since the beginning of the war, China hasimported oil, gas and coalworth more than 60 billion euros (about 94 billion dollars). These funds helped keep the Russian economy afloat and allowed Putin to finance his brutal war against Ukraine.
Additional help could include ammunition and precision weapons, including drones. Both sides in the war in Ukraine have consumed munitions at a rate that neither side can sustain with local production. Ukraine was able to tap into Western stocks. But with the exception of some shoddy North Korean ammunition, Russia has been denied options.
If China were to fill this gap, it could have a significant impact on the battlefield. This would allow the Russians to resume their artillery offensives that killed so many Ukrainians in Donbass in mid-2022, and which continue to do so around Bakhmut and other eastern targets.
China could also, if it decided to do everything to help Russia, provide armored vehicles and tanks to replace thehuge losseswhich the Russians have suffered and which the Russian national arms industry will take years to replace.
Helping Russia also has a downside for China
Of course, Chinese strategists would also balance these potential gains with the possible negative impacts.
Such assistance would strengthen thenegative trendin US-China relations. It would also provide an invaluable opportunity for the West to collect and exploit knowledge about Chinese arms and ammunition. China would like to avoid this, especially if it has bluffed on the quality of its new weapons.
Finally, theeconomic sanctions regimethat China might face in helping Russia would be considerable. Since one of the few bipartisan themes in the current US Congress isbe tough on chinathere would be immense pressure on the US president to impose sanctions on China for helping Russia.
This would greatly disrupt world trade. This would be a situation that China and the United States would like to avoid.
While China has much to gain if the war continues to absorb Western attention and weapons, it has much more to lose by intervening now.
There is no doubt that such an intervention would cause a major rift in relations between the United States and Europe on the one hand, and China on the other. At this time, it is unclear whether the Chinese leadership would be willing to risk the enormous diplomatic and economic costs of aiding Russia.
If at some point China changed its position, we could be very worried. Because a China that has decided to resist the West’s massive backlash may have decided it’s time for a broader confrontation with the West. And that could lead to many terrible results, including in our region.
Mick Ryan is a recently retired Australian Army Major General and Strategist. He served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a strategist with the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. His first book, War Transformed, deals with warfare in the 21st century.
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Sources 2/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-28/russia-china-ties-will-xi-jinping-help-putin-in-ukraine/102027440 The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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