Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine wants to work with countries like China with “influence on Russia” as his country faces a renewed Moscow offensive, urging Beijing to attend peace talks next month.
Well said. One thing I’d add is that it wasn’t only Putin going all in, but Xi’s own strategic impatience. China needed at least another generation to grow into its strengths as a world power, but Xi had, for various reasons, convinced himself that he, not his successors, would be the one to see it all through. By finishing the job Mao had started, Xi would be the one lauded by history as the one inheriting Mao’s mantle.
Xi likes to wax poetic about geostrategic “changes not seen in a century”. Ironically, his own ego and hamfistedness has given the West a once in a century opportunity to kneecap China and prevent it from consolidating into a true world power.
Honestly, if Xi would have just chilled his tits and taken a less confrontational approach vis a vis Taiwan and their idiotic and entirely irrelevant “nine-dash line” (I honestly view it with the same level of seriousness as that one time Trump drew on the hurricane forecast map with a sharpie and was like “HURRICANE GO HERE BECAUSE I BIG STRONG PRESIDENT”), they’d probably be in a far better position geopolitically.
The west was entirely willing to work in good faith with them, but Xi is stuck in a frustratingly Kissinger-esque zero-sum “great power” worldview, and doesn’t want to be partners with any other nation or regional alliance that they aren’t ultimately in control of. The consequences of that unnecessarily confrontational strategy are blatantly obvious at this point.
I disagree with that sentiment. The West was willing to put up with a lot of crap from CCP, but the refusal to allow a somewhat level playing ground, the tying of the fixed exchange rate of the remnibi to the dollar and the growing hostility and aggression towards Taiwan caused a lot of mistrust to grow and fester. When you look at the early 2000’s, the West was willing to play ball, just as it was playing ball with Russia at that time. Authoritarian strongmen are the issue here, not the West’s attitudes towards those respective nations.
Well said. One thing I’d add is that it wasn’t only Putin going all in, but Xi’s own strategic impatience. China needed at least another generation to grow into its strengths as a world power, but Xi had, for various reasons, convinced himself that he, not his successors, would be the one to see it all through. By finishing the job Mao had started, Xi would be the one lauded by history as the one inheriting Mao’s mantle.
Xi likes to wax poetic about geostrategic “changes not seen in a century”. Ironically, his own ego and hamfistedness has given the West a once in a century opportunity to kneecap China and prevent it from consolidating into a true world power.
Honestly, if Xi would have just chilled his tits and taken a less confrontational approach vis a vis Taiwan and their idiotic and entirely irrelevant “nine-dash line” (I honestly view it with the same level of seriousness as that one time Trump drew on the hurricane forecast map with a sharpie and was like “HURRICANE GO HERE BECAUSE I BIG STRONG PRESIDENT”), they’d probably be in a far better position geopolitically.
The west was entirely willing to work in good faith with them, but Xi is stuck in a frustratingly Kissinger-esque zero-sum “great power” worldview, and doesn’t want to be partners with any other nation or regional alliance that they aren’t ultimately in control of. The consequences of that unnecessarily confrontational strategy are blatantly obvious at this point.
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I disagree with that sentiment. The West was willing to put up with a lot of crap from CCP, but the refusal to allow a somewhat level playing ground, the tying of the fixed exchange rate of the remnibi to the dollar and the growing hostility and aggression towards Taiwan caused a lot of mistrust to grow and fester. When you look at the early 2000’s, the West was willing to play ball, just as it was playing ball with Russia at that time. Authoritarian strongmen are the issue here, not the West’s attitudes towards those respective nations.