For the first time, China has openly sided with Russia and acknowledged that it is in a de facto state of conflict with the USA:
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing cannot afford 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.
The comment, to the EU’s Kaja Kallas, would confirm what many in Brussels believe to be Beijing’s position but jar with China’s public utterances. The foreign minstry regularly says China is “not a party” to the war. Some EU officials involved were surprised by the frankness of Wang’s remarks.
Wang is said to have rejected, however, the accusation that China was materially supporting Russia’s war effort, financially or militarily, insisting that if it was doing so, the conflict would have ended long ago. 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”…
The tone of Wednesday’s dialogue was said to be respectful, if tense. Nonetheless, some insiders were surprised by the harshness of Wang’s message, just three weeks out from an important leaders’ summit in China. Any appearance of a charm offensive is seen to have evaporated.
This is not exactly a surprise. China has been waging asymmetric “unrestricted” warfare against the United States since 1999, although part of that strategy has been assiduously avoiding any direct conflict and any actual military engagement. But it appears that as the NATO-Russian war enters what one hopes will be its final stage before the collapse of the Kiev regime and the subsequent Russian stabilization of the situation, China is preparing itself for the US to turn its attention from Ukraine and the Middle East and toward Asia.
Does this have anything to do with what are still nothing more than rumors of Xi’s weakening hold on power? I doubt it, but it’s important to remember that his successor may not be another Western-influenced liberal, but could be considerably more of a hawk on Taiwan, Japan, and the USA than Xi has been.