The Biden administration is trying to put China into a corner over the Russia-Ukraine war. It spread the rumor that Putin has asked China to provide military aide to Russia. Biden supposedly warned that there will be consequences if China helps Russia. China has denied that Russia asked for help and that China has not agree to give such help.
The idea that Russia needs military help from China is not credible. The U.S. makes 36% of arms in the world. Russia is second with 21%. China is around 5th with about 5%. So for Russia, which is a big arms selling nation, to bow its head in shame to ask China for arms is ridiculous. China has been saying that it is staying out of the fight. The only shipments which China has made are for food, medical supplies and other aids to Ukraine. The Ukraine government has said that China has been helpful in trying to get Putin to the table. China is actually Ukraine's top trading partner. But that seems to be glossed over by the Western media.
People assume that China is on Russia's side, given Putin visited with Xi during the Olympics and they announced their friendship. But while China wants Russia on its side in balancing power against the U.S., it does not want to see an example of a country taking over territory of another. Territory integrity is important to China since Western countries want to break Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan from China.
China also does not war and sanctions to cripple the economy of the world which has helped China grow into an economic power. The West demands that China join the sanction of Russia. But why would China do that? It does not believe that sanctions work and that even the West is taking its own economic well being into account in applying sanctions. The West has kicked most Russian banks out of SWIFT but kept the banks that control oil trade in. It has stopped short of banning all Russian energy products. So why should China risk into own economic well being to help the West? Only the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Australia, South Korea and Japan are sanctioning Russia. All of Latin America, most of Asia, including India, and all of Africa are not participating. So 80% of the world population is not involve in sanctioning Russia. Yet, only China is being singled out.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is asking Iran and Venezuela to increase oil production. It is saying that sanctions against these countries will be lifted if they cooperate. I don't know if they will take the bait but China is likely do what is to its best interest. China does not want sanctions against it. But sanctions may come in the future no matter what China does. At least that is what a lot of Chinese believe. I think they don't like Putin's aggressiveness. But they don't see why they have to fall in line with the West. As one Chinese pundit said: "They are asking us to help them fight against their enemies today so that they will be able to fight us later." I think that is very grim.
China is in a tough situation as it sits in the middle between Russia and NATO. This could be a very important time for China and how it's seen in the west and by Russia. One of the diplomats was on Face the Nation a couple weeks ago. He was grilled pretty well and didn't really answer questions straight. I don't know why they send people on shows like this to give non-answers. No one wins here. I do think that as long as China doesn't send military aid or comes out in support of Russia, that might be good enough for NATO.
ReplyDeleteAnd as you've said, there is history here that might make China not want to go all in to support Russia. Everyone is in competition but they all have to get along as well. Do these sanctions work? I don't know. It seems that they do to some degree but a lot of it is window dressing for the public, so that it looks like something is being done without actually going to war.
I will say that Biden's off script comments from this weekend were not great even though we are all thinking it. It doesn't look like they moved the needle much but we will see. He's lucky if his comments get swept under the rug. Cooler heads need to prevail.
Speaking of cooler heads, did you see the Slap heard around the world? I woke up to the news about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock and thought it was fake (I guess I must watch too much wrestling!) only to find out it was real. I guess whenever these guys are talked about, people will think of the slap now. Not the best publicity but I guess in Hollywood, they still say there's no such thing as bad publicity!
-LBOAYM
I saw part of that Face of the Nation interview but not the whole thing. I think the guy is the ambassador to the U.S. Like any spokesperson, he can only say what his government instructed him to say. So that is not surprising. I did not like Margaret Brennan hijacking him with the last question about Xinjiang, which in my opinion is a total Western lie, and then not giving him a chance to rebuke but quickly ended the interview. So to the average viewer, China had no answer to the accusation.
ReplyDeleteI think the more we use sanctions, the more likely that it will hurt us as the dominant economic force in the world. When Trump took us out of the Iran nuclear deal, he sanctioned not only Iran but any company which deals with Iran. To me, why does any country has the power to tell everybody what to do? If you believe in a free capital system, you don't have to deal with somebody but you shouldn't be able to tell everybody else what they can't do. The U.S. has that power now but I think more people are thinking that the U.S. has too much power every time we use sanctions. So that is why you see Saudi Arabia is working with China to trade oil in yuan instead of dollars. It is a small step but if the dollar loses its monopoly in international trades, then we can't keep printing money to service our deficit. Our standard of living will irreversibly deteriorate. I am quite worry about this.
I saw on Youtube that Will Smith was actually laughing at Rock's joke at first. Jada is right to be upset about the joke and she rolled her eyes. Will must have seen her reaction and then realized he should not have laughed. So to compensate, he went up to slap Rock. I don't really buy his speech about protecting the family. There was no place for violence. Rock was wrong for the tasteless joke, Will was more wrong for violence. I feel bad for Jada. But she will probably has to relive this again when SNL makes a skit about this in the future.