“Because that would be totally devastating to our plans for Taiwan.”
💩
They don’t have those plans. That’s insinuated to distract from what the minister actually said and implied.
I have poined this out in the other post: https://feddit.org/post/15221478
This article is slightly misleading if compared with the SCMP article which has big implications on understanding the global power dynamics. Draw your own conclusions.
SCMP:
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing does not want to see a Russian loss in Ukraine because it fears the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing, according to several people familiar with the exchange.
vs
As the war in Ukraine drags on, Wang’s reported comments suggest that Russia’s war in Ukraine may serve China’s strategic needs as focus is deviated away from Beijing’s mounting preparation to launch its own possible invasion into Taiwan.
It’s subtle, but the attack on Taiwan is an interpretation. The minister means something else.
If the economic development continues, Taiwan will want to join China. Thus the focus of the US is interpreted differently by China, more like the focus Iraq or Afghanistan received.
SCMP:
During a marathon four-hour debate on a wide range of geopolitical and commercial grievances, Wang was said to have given Kallas – the former Estonian prime minister who only late last year took up her role as the bloc’s de facto foreign affairs chief – several “history lessons and lectures”.
Some EU officials felt he was giving her a lesson in realpolitik, part of which focused on Beijing’s belief that Washington will soon turn its full attention eastward, two officials said. One interpretation of Wang’s statement in Brussels is that while China did not ask for the war, its prolongation may suit Beijing’s strategic needs, so long as the US remains engaged in Ukraine.
vs
that they believed Wang was providing Kallas with a lesson in realpolitik during the four-hour encounter.
No mentioning of the “history lessons and lectures”, which is a friendlier way of saying that he has referenced past behavior that suggest that the EU is in the wrong.
There seems to be ignorance about what is going to happen even right at the top of the EU. The Chinese minister is calling bullshit. Yet Kallas must have already known better.
It’s actually interesting! It means that there is a way out: If europe accepts to help keep the US out of Beijings business. I don’t actually know how that could be done. And the EU doesn’t have that kind of coesion.
The US wants to stay the hegemon but China is advancing technology faster than the US. The conflict is about the multipolar world. Unfortunately the US, and the EU, haven’t explained why they don’t want to be part of a multipolar world.
This sentence makes no sense:
Unfortunately the US, and the EU, haven’t explained why they don’t want to be part of a multipolar world.
Is a multipolar world what russia is doing in Ukraine? If you’re going to have a world of trade blocks: NAmerica, SAmerica, EU, Africa, ME, russia?, China, India, Pacific. Europe is perfectly prepared to enter a multilateral or multipolar world order…but not the way russia announced it.
You can’t simply invade one of the members whenever they try to leave your block. Otherwise you’ll have constant wars in the borders between the blocks. I can tell you already why I would not want to regress to the kind of chaos and constant wars of multipolar unstable alliances of the 17th century, now with nukes and proliferation. Fun! Who wouldn’t want that?
A multipolar world can work, but you need stronger international institutions and law, not the mockery that russia, the US and israel turned the UN into.
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It also means that russia can’t unilaterally claim all of Ukraine, other countries can say no…it works for everyone. Welcome to the multipolar world too, russia.
And let me repeat: if the only thing other countries can do to stop anyone’s actions is war and countries just ignore borders, then it will be an extremely unstable system, like in the 17th century. Bipolar is more stable, like in the cold war. Unipolar is relatively stable, but there is no accountability, like in a 1-party system.
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Ukraine seems to be more of a unipolar project than a multipolar project. The important part is the last part of the last sentence.
David C. Hendrickson, in his article in Foreign Affairs on November 1, 1997, saw the core of the book as the ambitious strategy of NATO to move eastward to Ukraine’s Russian border and vigorously support the newly independent republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, which is an integral part of what Hendrickson said could be called a “tough love” strategy for the Russians. Hendrickson considers “this great project” to be problematic for two reasons: the “excessive expansion of Western institutions” could well introduce centrifugal forces into it; moreover, Brzezinski’s “test of what legitimate Russian interests are” seems to be so strict that even a democratic Russia would probably “fail”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
Of course there can also be wars in the multipolar world. But there are enough started by the US that peace seems to be secondary.
Ukraine is as multipolar as it gets: they don’t want to be russia’s bitch, so they asked everyone else for help, some helped.
If this is true, the EU better be figuring out how to change that price calculus for them.
Which makes me doubt an open admission actually did happen, since China would understand the possibility for blowback.
I used to joke that China wants to trade Ukraine for Taiwan, now it is very clear: you shut up about helping/recognizing/arming Taiwan and we keep a leash on russia…until next time…
Taiwan for Ukraine would actually be a trade worth considering for Europe. The major problem, besides values like freedom and democracy, international law, is the interruption of supply lines from Taiwan caused by a Chinese takeover.
Interruption? You mean ceasing, as all semiconductor industry would be levelled by the usa
Exactly, Taiwan made sure it was worth defending, but I fear that this will lose value over time. Besides you never know what stupid shit is going to come out of tramp’s brain the day anything escalates.
With the disruption of the chips act, taiwan will remain valuable a while yet
Trump like the military because he does like everything powerful and strong. I think he truly is opposed to long and costly wars. So far his actions track that pretty well.
Trump is looking for deals to enrich himself or become more famous and powerful.
…so was putin (who is smarter than him), it was supposed to be a 2-week SMO in the Donbas. But the problem with these megalomaniac gamblers is that it is easy for them to miscalculate, because they think war is easy, quick, simple and they think that their opponents are no match.
Well in the case of the places Trump wants to invade Canada and Greenland a war would very likely be a short special military operation. The US can easily blockade both land, sea, and air, so they don’t get any external supplies. After a short air campaign and ground invasion, the Canadian armed forces would have to retreat north outside the main population zones. They would run out of supplies pretty quickly. An ensuing guerilla war is possible, but unlikely to repel American forces any time soon.
The diplomatic fallout would be pretty bad though.
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Trade worth considering for Europe. Huh. So fuck the Taiwanese, if that’s good for Europe?
This kind of thinking by Westerners is why “multipolar world” as a concept is so popular.
Multipolar world exactly means abandoning Taiwan. It means everyone for themselves.
No. Multipolar means everyone can have multiple independently powerful allies/enemies. It means India, ASEAN, etc. being powerful enough to step in and help ROC when westerners decide to abandon it.
India and ASEAN have no credible power projection capabilities to do anything for Taiwan. ASEAN is primarily an organization for economic cooperation.
Multipolar means strong countries get to bully their neighbors without repercussions.
In a multipolar world they will have credible power projection capabilities.
China is clearly responding to EU leaders like Kallas saying China is next.
“Take on” is doing the heavy lifting in that whole video. It means dealing with all sorts of hybrid warfare on the part of China, like cyberattacks or funding Orban and far-right parties or taking on the cheap electric vehicles. It does not mean going to war with China. Even if you look at NATO’s documents, it is referred to as a long-term challenge, not a direct threat.
Again, this is in the context of Obama’s pivot to Asia. China sees what your saying as excuses and wants the EU to prove their not just following US orders. Which you’ve said over and over again they won’t decouple so China doesn’t believe them.
Maybe.
To be clear this is an outlet for pro-Ukrainian propaganda with stories that have quite often never been verified or repeated. I get it, they’re fighting a war for survival, but I still will take it with a grain of salt especially when it sounds unlikely.
Short notice that kyivindependent.com is certainly not neutral on this.
It’s being reported by other outlets like the CNN and the South China Morning Post.
Hey well maybe that would have been a good consideration to make before tying themselves to the outcome by tacitly (and directly) supporting Russia for profit in the first place. When your fortune is dependent on the eradication of millions of people, by choice, you deserve to lose, and can go kick rocks for all I care. Slava Ukraine.
Sure you can.
As a side note: there is speculation that China may be approaching a change of leader due to Xi experiencing health issues (not a change of leadership in the wider sense - the collegial system of the CCP is considered to be functioning).
Thus, it may be impossible for the Chinese foreign minister to be fully confident of what China’s policy will be in the future.
Obviously, China views it as unacceptable for Russia (its ally and soon enough, practically its vassal) to all-out lose. (The easiest way to not lose, of course, is not starting a war, but that train is long gone and behind the hills.)
Prolonging the war does not eliminate this risk well, however - exhaustion could spread in Russian society and morale could collapse despite the state spewing its propaganda, or the economy could collapse. So, simply propping up Russia by letting them buy the goods they shouldn’t be getting is not a very elegant solution. Direct interference on behalf of Russia would lead to open hostility with the EU, which is currently ambivalent about China.
What remains is nudging Russia to negotiate. But Putin is hard-headed and only willing to negotiate Ukraine’s surrender, on terms which Ukrainians will laugh out of the door.
As for the US being able to focus on China, well I guess they’re a bit concerned about it, but given the mental and organizational capability of the current US leadership, I don’t think Chinese analysts are particularly worried.
TACO boy is playing right into the hands of Russia and China like a four year old wanting personal fame and profit.
It still baffles me how people manage to justify China’s position on Russia. Sure it’s “geopolitics” but if you take a look at domestic propaganda in China itself it’s certainly much more than that.
Check out videos of what Ukrainians deal with while living in China - its down right disgusting how brainwashed Chinese are equating Zelenskyy to the likes of Hitler in Ukrainian’s faces and thsse are just normal people in apolitical contexts like nurses in hospitals. It’s absolute insanity.
That’s just Chinese people in general on any subject. Anyone who’s actually been to that country would notice pretty quickly that things are NOT OK. The Chinese population has never not known abuse and it shows.
I lived and worked in China for a year (Shenzhen). There was a palpable sense of brainwashing and/or an overpowering air of unhealthy patriotism there. Which made it stranger for me as I had Chinese friends and coworkers that seemed like decent normal people, we went to bars and drank and joked together. But whenever the topic of China as a country and its policies came up, everyone had a similar change in attitude and unwavering loyalty to the government.
I never felt that I was being targeted specifically, but I also never felt truly comfortable for a number of reasons. I’m glad I got to expand my horizons and experience a bit of what the country/city had to offer, I don’t think I would willingly go to live there again.
This roughly aligns with my xperience, although if they really get to know you some will be more forthright about their politics. Many look longingly to what we have in the west.
That is a startlingly weak position for China to be in.
I suspect the concern is that no one, including China itself knows how strong they would be in a military conflict, since they haven’t been in an at scale conflict in living memory, using economic power instead to great effect.
If they are really wanting to violently assert their view on Taiwan, they want global attention divided.
Not really startling. No big player other than Russia has ever been on China’s side RE Taiwan.
I feel like Russian support is pretty much a rounding error when it comes to Chinese power.
Yeah but their violence in Ukraine dilutes NATO military attention, even if they aren’t that powerful a direct military ally.
Implying that the US could be too focused on Russia right now to help Taiwan defend against a Chinese invasion sounds like wishful thinking considering how little they are doing to help Ukraine.
Well, they need to help Israel fight a multi-front war and commit genocide at the same time. That’s more than just walking and chewing gum at the same time.
World War 3 foreshadowing for the next season of the This Crazy Fucking Timeline show
Well, we are currently teeing it up.
I think we’re already in it. A world war, as I understand it, is basically just a situation where a variety of alliances and tensions build up until when a war erupts in one spot it rapidly spreads around to involve a large number of countries world-wide. That seems to be the case already, you can easily build a Pepe Silvia wall-of-crazy showing all the connections between Russia and China and Iran and Syria and Israel and Hungary and Ukraine and Belarus and the United States and Taiwan and on and on. The actual shooting pew pew warfare is still relatively confined (though bear in mind that literally a million Russian casualties have happened over a thousands-of-kilometers-long front line riddled with trenches and minefields, which is pretty significant) but all these countries are throwing their weight in on those fights and it’s easy to imagine them branching out quite quickly when conditions change.
There are alliances, but for a world war the major powers should all be directly involved. The biggest global powers are the USA, China, EU, Russia. Only one of them is directly involved in a serious war. In Ukraine the USA and Europe have been avoiding a direct involvement for a decade now.
The recent wars involving Israel only had minor involvement of western powers, mostly missile defense, and protection of shipping lanes. Israel has won decisively against Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria. The Houthis continue to be a nuisance and Hamas is restricted to small attacks. Some kind of ceasefire deal regarding Gaza becomes more likely by the day as both internal and external pressure mount on the Netanyahu government.
Hezbollah is seriously weakened. Lebanon has a new stronger government. Iran will take a decade to rebuild their strength. The Houthis can go back to killing Yemenis. If Hamas can recover is unclear, but it won’t be fast either. Syria is busy with getting their own affairs in order and even signaling possible peace with Israel.
The future for the Middle East looks almost promising I would say. Iran is weakened, cooperation and peace deals increase, several countries are tired of (civil) wars, Islamist Djihadism has lost wars and credibility.
I would bet on Russia trying to conquer Georgia, Armenia, or some other former Soviet country after a ceasefire or peace deal in Ukraine. Gotta keep that war economy going. Even then direct Western or Chinese involvement is unlikely.
Taiwan is a huge problem and a war would have huge global economic consequences. A huge air and naval war is certainly possible there involving China, Russia, and North Korea on one side against USA, NATO, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, and other Asian countries. The ensuing worldwide economic crisis and distraction of major powers could then trigger wars elsewhere.
A possible collapse, civil war, or break up of the USA could triggers lots of local wars where the US used be the dominant power. That includes all of Latin America, the pacific, but pretty much anywhere really.
Africa could also fall into some major wars caused by resource access, climate change, proxy wars, overpopulation, etc. Once industrialization really kicks off in Africa, major wars become more likely and deadly. The Congo and central Africa has lots of unresolved issues dating back to the previous Congo wars.
I think you’ve got an overly narrow view of “direct involvement.” If I’m in a war with someone and a country tells me “here, take these weapons” and I say “you know I’m going to use these weapons to kill soldiers of the country I’m at war with” and they say “yes, we know. We actually have some specific conditions about how and where you can use these to kill them, and some satellite photos to help you target them” then I’d call that direct involvement. Flesh-and-blood soldiers are only one small part of a nation’s military these days and not every part of a military needs to be involved for the military overall to be involved.
Delivering weapons is explicitly not taking part in hostilities according to international law.
China has chosen to be the enemy the west and rules based order then.
rules based order
The rules based order is allowing genocide to happen in Gaza.
The thread is about Ukraine. I am all for the genocide in Gaza to stop but can you try not to hijack any post about every other conflict?
It’s not exactly irrelevant when people try to frame “the West” as caring about justice and human rights as our imperial vassals actively conduct a genocide.
You cant really separate between the east and the west here though. Russia is attempting a genocide against Ukraine, China is committing 2 genocides and plans a third.
Overall “the west” is the side which is recognizing human rights more and every movement trying to change that is coming from russia.
UN Security Council resolutions have demanded Hamas release the hostages taken. This has been ignored by Hamas and thus provided Israel with a reason to continue the war.
No, you’re not understanding what is being said here. The west has always declared China the opponent and they’ll take China on when they finish their other conflicts like Russia. The EU has consistently asked China to stop Russia. China’s just saying the quiet part out loud. Who in their right mind would help you after you constantly called me a threat and told me if Russia falls you’re coming after me?
Edit for those down voting me, here’s Kallas saying China is next, the person China is talking to in the article.
The west has always declared China the opponent and they’ll take China on when they finish their other conflicts like Russia.
Always? Citation needed. After COVID, maybe? Or did it start with tramp in 2016, maybe sooner at the 2008 olympics? Certainly in 1993 that was not the case when China entered the WTO.
And of course: nearly nobody in the EU wanted to fight russia or spend more on defense until forced to open their eyes on russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine in 2022.
At least since Obama.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration
Here’s an EU based article saying that really it’s been happening since Clinton.
https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PaperDetails/25139
Always as in before anyone currently in power was in power.
Now, China is just saying what your thinking. If EU isn’t supporting USA on this, we can talk. Otherwise what do we gain from not keeping Russia afloat?
Edit btw the point of all of this is China is literally telling the EU how to stop the war. Turn on the US
Yeah, the 1st paper is from 2015, that’s after the Hong Kong protests, when it was finally clear that China was going to stamp out democracy in Hong Kong and Xi Jinping’s new Wolf Warrior diplomacy. Excuse us for being…unimpressed.
Eh, but I’m not making any predictions, but if russia implodes by repeatedly hitting their head against a wall, you’re cleaning up that mess, not us, he’s your drunken psychotic friend now. We already got plenty scalded trying to rehab them and getting blamed for everything that went wrong.
There are a lot of protests in Hong Kong, but the Hong Kong protests was definitely after 2015.
tramp has chosen to be the enemy of the west and the rules based order, China’s just been having a wonderful time flying under the cover of the daily orange meltdown since the clown show started.
PS: they don’t even have to do anything, they just have to point at trump and say “democracy, you mean THAT?” And they’ll be using it as evidence against the “chaos of democracy” worldwide.
kyivindependent is a disinformation platform
Can you do me a favor and come back with proof and sources I’d love to not believe in lies but I need evidence and honestly this makes sense to me. China is helping Russia, whether that’s for their benefits or what benefits exactly is unclear to me. So this seems true.
Oh cool, a Russian shill. Fuck straight off.
Newspaper created just before the invasion, no physical copy, only posting online. Only through English, consumed primarily through American Online platforms and now has a presence on the fediverse. Nah mate, I’m not an Orc, I’m just not blind.
How so?
I can’t really confirm it’s complete disinformation, but they always post stories that case Ukraine in a positive light and a lot of them are never confirmed or repeated elsewhere.
They are at war for their existence as a nation, so some of that is to be expected.
