It’s simply not true that China and Russia are friends. China and Russia don’t want friends. They want power, and territory. In 2014, Vladimir Putin saw his stock rise in Russia when he took Crimea fairly easily and decided he would give himself a boost by reclaiming the rest of Ukraine for Russia this year. What could go wrong? Turns out, everything.
His military is getting more decimated by the day, and even if he eventually does manage to topple Kyiv, how the hell is he going to hold onto it? The insurgency hasn’t even started, and Putin simply doesn’t have the resources or funding. With a collapsing economy, Russia is fast becoming a third-world nation that is angering his people and, more importantly, the elites he needs to stay in power.
China is just as shocked as everyone else in the world to see the mighty Russian military turn out to be an over-bloated, underfunded, poorly trained pool of corruption and incompetence. China would love to put Taiwan under its thumb, as it is currently trying to do in Hong Kong, but seeing the West completely unified and strengthened from this conflict has probably put any imminent plans on hold.
Yet Taiwan is not the only territory China is seeking. They are encroaching on areas in Nepal and Japanese islands in the East China Sea. China is also claiming maritime territory for most of the South China Sea, threatening Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
However, China also believes that Vladivostok, the largest port city in Russia, was wrongly annexed in 1860 after China was defeated during the Second Opium war. Vladivostok used to b e named “Haishenwai” when it was pa rt of the Qing Dynasty. It has a large Chinese population, and China even temporarily occupied the city after the Russian revolution to protect its Chinese population. Keep in mind that Russia justified invading Ukraine with the claim that it has historically been Russian territory and that they needed to protect the Russian population there.
In 2020, the Chinese State-run broadcast, China Global Television Network, tweeted this angry tweet when the Russian embassy celebrated 160 years of Vladivostok being under Russian control.
The video below gives a great analysis of why it’s a very real threat that China may decide to invade Vladivostok if the war continues to go very badly for Putin. This would have been unthinkable just a week ago, but he makes very good points of why it’s at least a possibility.
Would China or Russia truly risk a nuclear war? Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the year for rational decisions.
