Russia has asked China for military equipment, and perhaps other help, in its war against Ukraine:
What can this mean? Does Russia really need military equipment?
Or is Putin testing the waters, trying to see whether China will help Russia evade sanctions?
Whatever Putin’s motivation, this is a natural experiment which may reveal the motivations and thinking of China’s leaders.
One hypothesis about China is that it is not a pure example of billionaire capitalism, although heaven knows it has plenty of billionaires. Because China’s prosperity depends on manufacturing, which implies a middle class composed of managers, engineers, accountants, skilled workers and sub-contractors, its predominant socialization must be realistic, honest, and generally cooperative. No manufacturing sector can exist without those values. However authoritarian and corrupt the government may be, there is an indispensable part of society which is (perhaps passively, even unconsciously) opposed to that authoritarianism and corruption.
It may be possible to test this hypothesis by China’s response to Putin’s cry for help. Will China throw Putin a lifeline? On the merits of the case, I would say no. If you or I were in Xi’s shoes, would we do Putin any big favors? Favors that Putin will, in all likelihood, be unable (or unwilling) to re-pay?
Sure, Xi might be willing to help a little, just to placate a neighbor, but what is Xi’s underlying attitude to Putin and Putin’s regime in Russia? He doesn’t seem to mind if Putin puts pressure on the Americans or Europe, but does Xi want a stronger and more aggressive Russia on his northern border? Does he actually want Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to succeed? He most likely does not—but if he does, that tells us something.
If I were Xi I would see Putin as an unpredictable neighbor with a nuclear arsenal that could destroy China in minutes. I would prefer a weaker Russia, governed by someone with more serotonin than Putin.
Yes, Xi probably likes the precedent Putin is trying to set, that of regional powers using force to subdue or absorb smaller neighbors. But he may be realistic enough to see that the effective “precedent” is how fiercely the West and Ukraine are resisting Putin’s invasion. What Putin is doing in Ukraine won’t help Xi with Taiwan—quite the contrary. Furthermore, Xi has been slow on the uptake during this crisis. He genuinely believed that Russia wouldn’t invade, or so he told American diplomats. And he failed to see the implications for his frequently used “national sovereignty” argument. If China supports Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—or even if it doesn’t oppose it strongly—then it loses credibility whenever it asserts “national sovereignty” in response to criticism of its Uighur and Hong Kong policies. What about Ukraine’s sovereignty, people will ask?
What could Putin give Xi in return for help evading Western sanctions? Rubles are practically worthless now outside Russia, and although China might like some cheap Russian oil, the risks probably outweigh the benefits. After all, the oil wouldn’t be free, and China can easily afford to buy oil on the world market without antagonizing the West. China doesn’t need Russian oil; it does need access to Western markets.
Xi might like to have Outer Manchuria back, which the Russians seized in the mid-1800s. This would include Vladivostok, but even proposing that to Putin would be risky. Right now, Putin doesn’t seem to regard China as a threat, but that could change in a heartbeat.
And of course, China and Russia are bound to have differences in the future. For example, China’s Belt and Road initiative implies a reduction in Russian influence in Central Asia and the Middle East.
But what if? What if, despite the above considerations, Xi does want Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to succeed? Why in the world would he want that?
There are three possibilities:
(1) China is a Billionaire State, just like Russia, and Xi and Putin share approximately the same ideology. This conclusion would require an explanation for the social and cultural differences between China and Russia—and for the fact that Xi himself seems to hold Chinese billionaires in low regard. However, despite their differences, Russia and China might be more similar than they appear on the surface.
(2) Xi Jinping believes that anything that destabilizes the West, that frightens Europe and humiliates America is a good thing. Here we trip over a contradiction in China’s foreign policy: China is a world power because of its manufacturing sector, but this sector is far too large for China’s domestic market; China must export and in fact it originally developed its manufacturing primarily for that purpose. So stable trade relationships are a high priority for China.
However, to distract the Chinese people from the severe inequality of their society, the corruption and lack of basic human rights, China beats a nationalist drum day and night. And this isn’t just for propaganda purposes; there is an argument to be made that in their day the US and the UK used their economic power to build global political and economic systems, and that China will inevitably do the same.
But that argument only works if you don’t look at the details. The British brought public health measures, education and a legal system that made commerce possible. They got rid of pirates and bandits, and they built railroads. Of course, no one wants to be colonized, but the British did bring a model of civil society that had some distinct benefits. If you think that’s a post-colonial rationalization, go ask the people in Hong Kong. The rights they attempted to defend against Xi were derived from the Enlightenment and from Europe, and if the gods favor their cause, they will seize those rights again in a heartbeat.
American hegemony wasn’t as hands-on as British colonialism was, but it emphasized free-trade and regional alliances, and in the immediate post-war era it insisted on democracy. So there were benefits, especially for countries was like Germany and Japan, where democracy hadn’t taken root before WWII.
As an aside, note that Chinese manufacturing success was made possible by the American global system, which allowed more-or-less free trade between countries with different political systems.
The problem the Chinese have in building a global empire is that they have nothing to offer the people they are attempting to colonize. What are you going to give us that’s better than the American system? Xi actually seems to believe that people want to be freed from the yoke of democracy and civil liberties.
Without an attractive ideology, the Chinese cannot build a global system of their own without destabilizing and destroying the existing Western system. If the Western system didn’t work anymore, then the Chinese system might become the only choice.
But destabilizing the existing global system can’t happen without destabilizing and weakening the countries that founded that system or which benefit from it: the US, Europe, Japan, and the rest of what we used to call the Free World. This is absurd: China cannot have stable trade relationships with countries it is attempting to de-stabilize.
This is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Chinese foreign policy. The Western global economy implies competition between nations, but not outright or covert aggression; there is an unwritten political constitution which everyone has to accept—there are limits. The West is now in the process of expelling Russia from the global economy because Putin doesn’t accept those limits.
Both Russia and China have treated that economic system as a given, as if it were a public utility; it’s not. It was created by the US and its allies to serve their interests after World War II, and it was modified to include Russia and China after the Cold War, again to serve the long-term interests of the US and its allies. The hope at that time was that Russia and China would be among those allies. But Russia and (perhaps) China don’t want to be part of that alliance anymore, so they can’t be part of the global economy, either. The logic here is not at all obscure—the West will not allow Russia (or China) to use the global economic system to destroy that same system. Lenin said that the last capitalist would sell the rope used to hang him, but that was just a joke.
The only way any nation can replace the current global system is to come up with something better, and China and particularly Russia have nothing to offer there.
(3) One of China’s long-term goals is to make Russia an economic colony. If this were a novel, that would be a good ending.
Seriously, Xi goes to a lot of trouble to convince Putin that’s not his goal, but of course the Chinese would colonize Russia if it were risk-free. But in fact the risks are enormous.
So, which of these explanations do I prefer? Although (1) may or may not prove true in the long run, (2) is the best and most direct explanation if Xi were to help Russia. Helping Putin has no tangible benefit to China—-it only makes sense as an anti-Western move. In other words, Xi would have to be willing to alienate his business associates in service to a nationalist “wolf warrior” policy—I might even say fantasy.
But helping Russia at this point would be another sign that China has misread the situation. Russia appears increasingly unlikely to win the military struggle in Ukraine, and it’s already suffered a bruising and perhaps decisive defeat politically and economically. The West has decided to erase 30 years of economic integration with Russia. We are now returning to the trade system of the Cold War, where the default was no trade, and any exceptions were all bi-lateral and carefully negotiated at the highest levels. Of course, there was always a bit of trade with Finland and other neutral countries, but nothing that rose to the level of global importance. And Western banks did loan the USSR money, even in Stalin’s time.
But no one will be loaning Putin money, and how would he spend it if they did? Russia can no longer do EFTs as before. The old system of allowing Russia mostly free trade and free access to global banking is dead. Remember those 16,000 Syrian mercenaries that Putin announced he was hiring? How was Putin planning to pay them? In rubles, stuffed in manila envelopes?
Most of these sanctions will be long-lasting, perhaps permanent. Prohibiting travel to and from Russia may be next. And then the West may go on an Easter Egg Hunt through offshore banks, freezing any account that belongs to a Russian citizen.
Nothing China can do will lessen the impact of sanctions on Russia in any significant way, because it cannot change the decision to decouple Russia’s economy from the West. For Europe in particular this is a matter of self-defense. If the Ukraine invasion hadn’t been vigorously opposed by the West, the consequences would have been immediately dire for Poland and the Baltic states and perhaps Romania as well. Would a NATO that didn’t dare send anti-tank weapons to Ukraine really fight a war to protect Latvia? And in that case Lithuania and Estonia would also be doomed and NATO credibility would be kaput. Then Putin would start putting pressure on Poland. And with every success, his fear of the West would weaken.
Xi has no doubt realized that some of what the West is doing to Russia it could also do to China if events took an unfortunate turn. Ending trade entirely with China would be difficult, but any significant reduction would leave a mark.
And cutting China off from Western capital markets would be damaging. China’s recent economic growth has been partly driven by building housing and a modern infrastructure, and that requires borrowing. Not all of China’s borrowing is from the West, but the loss of Western capital would be significant.
China is not accustomed to recessions. How would the people react?
Although China may well do the sensible thing, this crisis is sobering. Are unprovoked invasions the inevitable endgame of Billionaire Capitalism? Putin uses Russian nationalism, Xi uses Han nationalism, Trump uses white nationalism and the Saudis use extreme Islam—-in every case to unite their citizens against outsiders and to blunt any reform movement that might take inspiration from other countries.
But nationalism is built for war; it’s not good for much else. Putin’s Russia is the most fully realized Billionaire State, and here we are, watching the Russian army commit a hundred war crimes a day against the Ukrainians, a Slavic Orthodox people whose only crime is not wanting to live under Putin’s thumb.
Russia doesn’t need this war, not in the least. But a country kept at a fever pitch by intensive nationalist propaganda may come to feel that war is inevitable—even a great relief when it finally breaks out.
Nationalist propaganda, originally just a tool of Billionaire Capitalism, often takes on a life of its own. Propaganda is just a narrative, and we structure our lives around narratives; simply living without a story or myth is difficult for us, although it’s often the best path.
People have died for the sake of illusions, that is, false narratives. We may hope and pray with all our passion that the human race does not disappear because we believed nationalist nonsense.
The Socialist Investor 