A Crack in the Facade - The Unraveling Friendship between Putin and Xi (msn.com)
China's President Xi Jinping wants to deepen cooperation with Putin after the presidential elections Sergei Guneyev/Pool/picture alliance© Sergei Guneyev/Pool/picture alliance
Ever since China's dictator, Xi Jinping, declared that he would maintain a "no limits" friendship with the Russian autocrat, Vladimir Putin, it has been clear that this new partnership would not be on equal terms.
Without the power tools at Xi Jinping's disposal, the war against Ukraine would likely have already ended in favor of the invaded nation, and Putin would no longer be in office. It is Chinese money that is keeping Russia's economy and hence its war industry running.
( Putin, the Chinese puppet. )
Putin needs the political support from Beijing, the Chinese capital, which over the past years has increasingly become the coordination hub for the most dreadful regimes of the present.
Xi wants to utilize supremacy The dangerous threads from North Korean Pyongyang, Iranian Tehran, and the Kremlin converge on Xi's desk. Beijing also encourages dictator Kim Jong-un and the mullahs to support Putin's warmongering.
It's clear that Xi sees himself as the patron and father figure in this circle of the godless. He wants to use this supremacy to get hold of Russian war technology, which is supposed to give him a strategic advantage in his dangerous ambitions in the West Pacific.
In this region of the world, Xi wants to secure territories and bodies of water that belong to the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, among others. He also wants to push back the US and its ally Australia in Oceania.
For this, he mainly needs Russia's submarine technology, which Putin will have to serve up subserviently. In the past, the time before the war against Ukraine, the Kremlin was still able to fend off Chinese advances of this kind. This option no longer exists.
Moscow itself is in the firing line When it comes to territory that China wants to conquer, Moscow itself is in the firing line: parts of today's Russia belonged to the Chinese empire until the 19th century. Nationalists in the People's Republic are now demanding that ruler Xi reclaim this former Chinese territory.
A deep rift is emerging between China and Russia, reminiscent of the large bloc confrontation in the 20th century between Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev.
Both Putin and Xi see themselves as representatives of their, as they believe, historically unique and special empires, which they have been called to restore to their former greatness.
With the help of the Marxist world spirit and Russian Orthodoxy, they both want to build an empire. Both men are avowed revanchists, meaning they want to reverse the development of the past and subordinate everything else to this goal.
If Beijing were to reclaim the piece of old China annexed by the tsarist empire, which is three times the size of Germany, important port cities like Vladivostok would belong to Beijing.
China has long taken measures Russia's ruler, despite all dependency on China, cannot let this happen without a fight. But the Russian army is still tied up in Ukraine and might not be able to withstand a Chinese invasion.
For now, at least, Xi does not need to pursue this goal militarily. Since Russia can no longer find good foreign investors, and trade with the free, democratic world has broken off, Beijing has already secured rights in the form of investments and the associated shares in the port of Vladivostok.
As Germany has learned from the example of the port of Hamburg, the People's Republic secures shares in the security-relevant infrastructure of countries it might want to put under political pressure through such deals.
Even though the Russian Federation and the People's Republic agreed and settled at the beginning of the 21st century that no further territorial claims based on the past would be raised, Vladivostok and other Russian coastal cities are still listed with their Chinese names on official maps.
Putin and Xi both believe in the law of the jungle The Beijing government even goes one step further in the case of Heixiazi Island on its northwestern border with Russia. This territory between the two countries has been listed as the territory of the People's Republic on Chinese maps since last year, although it is actually Russian territory.
In the case of Hong Kong, Xi has shown that he doesn't care about contracts and is always ready to break promises that have been made. Both Xi and Putin believe in the law of the jungle and not in the rule of law. This hubris typical of dictators could ultimately turn the two against each other.
The conflict region between the two supposed bosom buddies is far away from Europe, thousands of miles away from the scene of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.
They're likely already playing out scenarios in the Kremlin
It's therefore quite possible that Western allies are underestimating the importance of this growing rift in the Sino-Russian friendship.
But in the Kremlin, they've probably been playing out scenarios for a long time, should the relationship with Beijing really deteriorate massively.
For Putin, the new tone from Beijing comes at an inopportune time, as his military is currently planning the next offensive against Kiev. Meanwhile, China's defense budget is growing and growing, with the army being modernized under Xi's aegis.
Putin needs Xi, but he can't let everything slide. In the end, the "no limits" friendship may have just been an elaborate bluff to take revenge for the territorial loss that the tsarist empire inflicted on imperial China. |
