Crisis in Ukraine China is now keeping a close eye on how united the West is against Russia

Beijing

Is there possible that China will attack Taiwan in the near future in the shadow of the Ukrainian crisis?

That is, China would seize the opportunity now that the United States and the rest of the world would not be able to focus solely on Taiwan.

There would then be two really big crises in the world going on at the same time.

Such views easily rise to headlines in this wounded world, but the mainstream of Chinese connoisseurs does not seem to believe in them.

“China’s military is not yet ready for that. A party meeting is also coming, ”said a senior researcher Jakub Jakobowski from the Polish OSW Research Center on Friday with a remote lecture to journalists. He is studying Sino-Russian relations.

Next fall, the Chinese Communist Party’s party meeting is likely to decide that China’s leader Xi Jinping may continue even if he has already sat for the normal term of office, i.e. ten years.

Before the meeting, the party wants everything to go as smoothly as possible. War in between would be an unlikely choice.

Taiwan is virtually independent, but China sees it as its part. In recent years, tensions between Taiwan and China have increased.

Read more: Taiwanese Guo Wen-Jing wanted to be a pilot because he had never been on a plane. Now he flies a fighter jet on one of the world’s most explosive borders.

Jakobowski however, it is worth exploring the possibility that in the future, China and Russia would jointly divert U.S. military attention to two sides of Eurasia at the same time.

China is now keeping a close eye on how the United States and the EU are acting in Ukraine, Jakobowski said. From this, it can deduce the strength and unity of the retaliation if China ever invades Taiwan in the future.

Of course, the United States has a stronger bond with Taiwan than Ukraine, both politically and militarily, which makes comparison difficult.

Read more: On a shaky border

Russia and China have converged as sanctions imposed by the democratic world and accusations of their human rights and territorial violations have pushed authoritarian states together.

On the opening day of the Winter Olympics on February 4, Xi Jinping and the Russian leader Vladimir Putin met in Beijing and issued a joint statement.

The weight of the meeting has been debated around the world.

Read more: Russia and China turned out to be top friends, but who benefits from the relationship?

Several EU leaders considered the meeting a significant weekend in their speeches. EU foreign policy representative Josep Borrell called the statement of authoritarian leaders a “manifesto for the rewriting of the world order”.

Jakobowski also considers the meeting important. The bigger issues in the leaders’ statement – in particular China’s understanding of Russia’s concerns about NATO’s expansion – had previously been heard in China by ministers, diplomats or state-controlled newspapers. So it wasn’t about new things.

“But they had never been made public at this level, and it was a big opening from China.”

Ukraine was not mentioned in the statement, but Russia virtually expressed support for the position that Taiwan belongs to China. Xi, for his part, said countries “support each other’s sovereignty and security” so that they can better address “external harassment and regional threats”.

There is no official union between China and Russia.

Although There is mistrust and imbalance between China and Russia in favor of rich China, they also have a lot in common and common interests, Jakobowski said.

Both authoritarian leaders – Putin and the Chinese Communist Party – fear they will be overthrown by democratic forces. Both believe that the democratic West is weakening and authoritarian powers are rising. Neither likes the United States increasing its power in the Pacific.

China can offer Russia trade and money, especially in the face of Western sanctions. China, in turn, can learn diplomacy and warfare from Russia, Jakobowski said. China after not fighting for a long time, Russia matters little.

The Russian example is an interesting area of ​​research for China.

“Russia is an aggressive icebreaker testing the West,” Jakobowski said.

Stateside China’s intensified relations with Russia, and in particular the meeting of leaders in early February, are interpreted in very different ways.

It is described by fresh stuff In The New York Times (NOW) and In The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said two things in parallel on Saturday:

According to Wang, Ukraine’s right to self-determination must be “respected and safeguarded” – which could be considered an anti-Russian statement. Instead, Wang followed Russia by opposing NATO’s expansion into Europe.

According to sources interviewed by NOW, China’s statement was a significant support for Russia because of the NATO position, as Russia had concentrated a huge amount of troops on Ukraine’s borders at the time.

The WSJ, for its part, took part of Wang’s statement in his analysis, in which he called for respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty. The newspaper saw it as a warning to Russia.

According to the WSJ’s analysis, it came as a surprise to China how strongly the West reacted to Putin’s and Xin’s joint declaration. China would not want to mess any further with the United States, so it would have taken a bit of a backseat now.

On Tuesday, Wang said the legitimate security concerns of all states must be respected.

If the WSJ’s analysis is correct, China is in a difficult situation: it would like to keep its good distance to Russia, its reasonable distance to the EU, and at least it will not worsen its distance from the United States.