About three weeks ago, in an article describing my initial reaction to Russia's invasion, I expressed surprise at this move by Russia. Galvanizing the West against Russia seemed like a foolhardy idea when just a short time ago Russia and the US were close to a dentente (Siow) that would have put Russia on better footing to oppose continual encroachment upon their interests by their long-time rival, China (Standish). An even greater irony is that I was working on an article at the time showing why I found a Russo-Chinese alliance unlikely (Friedman; Defense Updates; Stone-Fish), considering a daunting litany of reasons why Russia would benefit from weakening China while having little to gain from an alliance with it other than vassal-state status (Ishikawa).
And yet, that is precisely where we are, with Chinese support for Russia's rapidly failing invasion of Ukraine seeming to look less like a "limitless friendship" and more like an ascendant China propping up a broken, contrite, helpless, and now utterly dependent Russia (Al Jazeera Staff), which has taken North Korea's former place as China's barking, overly aggressive hound with which to annoy the West. And Russia will soon learn that China does not recognize allies. Only tributaries.
A Match Made A Long Way South of Heaven
A side effect of Beijing’s investment – an influx of Chinese migrants – is often perceived by locals as an expression of China’s de facto territorial expansion. Some Russian political groups and media outlets have tapped into this anxiety and deliberately sensationalised it. An apocalyptic film China – a Deadly Friend (in the series “Russia Deceived”) became an instant internet hit after its release in 2015. In the film, we are told China is preparing to invade the RFE in its quest for global dominance and that Chinese tanks could reach the centre of the city of Khabarovsk within 30 minutes.
-Ivan Tselichtchev, South China Morning Post, emphasis mine
Let me start by saying that I lived in Beijing for six years and southern China for a year before that, and during that time I had... let's say "close and frequent contact" with more than a few citizens of the Russian Federation, most of whom were friends of the Moscow girl I dated for the last two of those six years. One thing that stood out in absolutely every conversation (that is EVERY, bar-none) that I ever had with a Russian citizen about the Chinese, or with a Chinese citizen about Russians, was this: Russians and Chinese hate each other with a blazing, fiery passion.
The friction between these two goes a lot deeper than Russian bitterness over China's growing influence in Central Asia, long viewed by Moscow as part of Russia's sphere of influence. Not only has Russia had a major pest problem in recent years regarding Chinese spies (Lagrone; Moscow Times Staff), but Russia is closely allied with several countries who are at odds with China. For one example, Russia supplies India with weapons that are specifically aimed at countering Chinese aggression toward India (Basu). Much of India seems oblivious to the contradiction of "in order to fight China, we rely on equipment from Russia, which is now a lackey of China (Sibal; Sharan)," or the fact that this makes India's support for Russia in their losing war of aggression against Ukraine a bit self-defeating (Sharma), but I digress.
For another example, China's laughable claims over an entire sea area to their south have stepped on Russia's toes by choking out Russia's joint oil interests with their partner (and China's long-standing enemy), Vietnam (Onishi; Murray).
China, likewise, has made no secret of their view that anything in Russia that has ever had Chinese (or Chinese-ruled) feet upon it, such as Russia's only major Pacific port of Vladivostok, rightfully belongs to China and that China has a "historical right" to take it back.
The modern-day territory of Primorsky Krai, whose capital is Vladivostok, was formerly part of the Qing’s Manchurian homeland but was annexed by the Tsarist empire in 1860 following China’s defeat at the hands of Britain and France in the second opium war.
It was handed over under one of three “unequal” treaties China was forced to sign with Russia, France and Britain that year, in an agreement that also saw the Kowloon peninsula being added to the colony of Hong Kong.
-Eduardo Baptista, South China Morning Post
While the Chinese government makes no claims on the city – all border disputes with Russia were formally settled in 2008 – netizens responded that it is only a matter of time until their country regained what is rightfully their’s. “Butcher! Robber! Get out of China!” one incensed nationalist responded on weibo.
“Vladivostok, Blagoveshchensk, Sakhalin, Khabarovsk are all Chinese territory,” wrote another, listing several cities and islands in Russia’s far east.
-Week in China 503
And of course, speaking of old grudges China has not forgotten, there is the fact that the Russian-led USSR was on the brink of a nuclear saturation assault against China in 1969 (Farley), in retaliation for China's invasion of Damansky Island at a time when the two nations professed to be allies (Radchenko). The fact fact that Russia's Iksander-M and China's hypothetically-existent DF-41 have both been reportedly moved into positions where they have few targets except each other in recent years (Chow; Plopsky) only highlights this long-standing feud, and Russia's awareness that its biggest vulnerability is of being overwhelmed by China (McDermott) even more.
Modi's Wild Idea (That Almost Worked)
India reportedly told Russia that just as it supports Moscow’s Greater Eurasia project – in which Russia’s foreign policy is intended to pivot to the East and greater engagement with Asia – so too should Russia support the Indo-Pacific grouping, and not see the idea merely as a strategy by Washington to divide the region.
-Maria Siow, South China Morning Post
The years between 2016 and 2020 were an unusual time in global politics. Alliances that once seemed unthinkable were discussed, and alliances that once seemed unsinkable were threatened. Just as Donald Trump put pressure on NATO by threatening to withdraw if members did not step up and actually meet their defense spending pledges (and just imagine how powerless NATO would be right now if he had not done so), There was a brief time when India's Prime Minister, Modi, had an idea of his own. Since the "Quad Alliance," which consists of nations that are annoyed with China's constant predations, was being increasingly viewed as US-led, why not bring in Russia, another nation that had its own historic grievances against China and which could could be a "rival alpha," a counterweight to US leadership in the bloc?
Given the Trump Administration's often overstated reputation of being Russia-friendly, it is no surprise that Mike Pompeo said "I think there's that possibility," but what is even more surprising is that Moscow considered it as well. It was during this time that Russia pulled troops away from its ongoing crisis in Ukraine's Donbas and sent them to the Russian Far-East (Marrow), giving Ukraine the only reprieve it has known since 2014 and making a move that was unmistakably aimed at China. Coupled with Russia's decision to fast-track S-400 delivery to India while delaying the same system's delivery to China, at a time when China and India were in armed conflict with each other, it was hard not to see this as Russia's attempt to test the water of a potential entry into the alliance against China, and as recently as March 2021, two months into the Biden Administration, there were still experts who found it feasible (Tellis). Certainly the pieces all fit together well enough for everyone to be happy (except China).
Whether or not this could ever have been carried to completion we will never know. The lynchpin of Modi's gambit was that the US was led at that time by Donald Trump, a man with little regard for political conventions and a willingness to contemplate what had once been deemed unthinkable. In his place came Joe Biden, a man whose two principle concerns in life were appeasing his voter base (who all remain convinced to this day that Trump was under Russian control) and making sure no one with dirt on his son's shady dealings at Burisma is left alive, both of which were served by provoking Russia at every turn. And the result? Well, 3 million displaced Ukrainians (BBC Staff) and the ghosts of 13,500 Russian troops who died in a losing war for for a lie they were told by their leaders (Kyiv Independent Staff) can tell you what the result was, and both of those numbers are rising by the day (not to mention the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians who have been killed in the invasion).
So Where Does That Leave Russia?
As Russia's pipe-dream of a "swift victory" in Ukraine runs into obstacle after obstacle and begins to look like a humiliating defeat eerily reminiscent of China's 1979 invasion of their smaller and war-battered neighbor, Vietnam, Russia has begged for help. A few days into the war, when Russia noticed that the only one of their invasion fronts that was having any success was the one from the north, - that is, the one with Belarussian support - the Kremlin seems to have astutely determined "non-Russian troops are more skillful fighters than Russian troops." Perhaps this is why they went to Kazakhstan and asked "Hey bro, remember our help dealing those anti-China riots? (Denisov) Well, how about paying us back by sending some troops to help us fight in Ukraine, eh?" Kazakhstan, seemingly more savvy of the long-term economic impact of becoming a pariah state, told their old ally to kick rocks (Norway Today Staff). This has left the increasingly drained Russian Military begging for assistance from... guess where.
That's right: China (Wong & Barnes).
Meanwhile, in addition to military aid, Russia is also counting on Big Brother Beijing to help bail them out economically (White & Hille) from the damage done by the sanctions 34 countries have already inflicted upon Russia (Cheng). This leaves Russia in an undeniably helpless position at China's mercy. They are dependent upon China to save their economy, both by becoming Russia's only major export market and by becoming Russia's only major supplier of consumer goods.
Let's put it in an admittedly-less-than-scholarly metaphor. Imagine you're a pimp who is addicted to crack. You hustle hookers for a living, and you spend it on crack. Imagine also that your local crack dealer has a fondness for hookers. Now imagine your crack dealer has other clients who will buy his product if you get too problematic, and other pimps who can hustle hookers to him, but you don't have another customer for the hookers you hustle nor is there another crack dealer in the city who'll sell to you, because they're ashamed of you picking a fight with someone a third your size. Let's further imagine that you, the crack-addicted pimp, are in the process of getting your ass kicked in front of the entire block by the guy a third your size, and now you're also begging the dealer (who has other clients and other suppliers, even though you have neither) to send hired muscle because no one else has your back. Essentially, in this situation, the dealer owns your ass.
If the metaphor wasn't obvious enough, Russia is the crack-addicted pimp, Ukraine is the guy a third his size, and China is the crack-dealer. In retrospect maybe it should've been Fentanyl instead of crack, but I digress.
The point is, China now has a choice to make. If they choose to give aid to Russia (specifically, if they give ENOUGH aid for Russia to turn their situation around and win), they will have made the West look weak and impotent on the field of battle (which has been China's wet dream since the 1840's), at the expense of sharing Russia's isolation from the West (which an export-driven economy can scarcely afford, since Russia's crumbling economy will not be able to replace the West as a market for China's cheap consumer goods). If they tell Russia "no," then a broken and humiliated Russia, reviled for starting a war in Ukraine and mocked for losing it, will have no choice other than Chinese dominance, just as their ancestors labored under Mongol dominion (Nasonov). If that happens, it's a foregone conclusion China will force Russia to stop selling arms to India to resist Chinese incursions. And also, well...
...it basically means everyone in the Russian Far East and Siberia should start studying Mandarin and learning China's national anthem.
Meanwhile, Russia, the Chinese owe you another thank you. You've helped them solve their shortage of marriageable women. They'll soon be collecting your wives and daughters as tribute. It's unlikely most Russian women will mind, considering most of their husbands and boyfriends will be lying dead on Ukrainian soil.
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