"China Can’t Afford a Russian Defeat in Ukraine" Topic

In a closed-door meeting with the European Union's new foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly admitted that Beijing cannot accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine. According to an official briefed on the nearly four-hour meeting in Brussels, Wang's remarks reveal a strategic concern that a Russian defeat could allow the United States to redirect its focus entirely toward China, intensifying pressure on Beijing in the broader geopolitical rivalry…

ASEAN Now: link

interesting read.

That could be true. If Putin would throw in the towel then China would be the number one threat.

China has been the number one threat since the fall of the Soviet Union. China has been conducting asymmetrical warfare against the West, US in particular, for decades.
Tens of thousands of Americans die from Fentanyl overdoes and it's all made in China.
Thousands of Chinese students study at American colleges and universities in the sciences and send all their research back to China.
Chinese spy networks riddle the US government and industry.
The Chinese use the massive trade deficit money to build a blue water navy and aircraft carriers.
If Russia loses badly, China will take over western Russia, to protect Chinese interests and insure ethnic Chinese are protected from the bad Russians.

Mike

You mean the Chinese would need to "de-Nazify" Russia itself?

First of all, China will take back Taiwan)))

Bunkermeister +1

First of all, China will take back Taiwan)))

Not on the current trajectory of the CCP. The internal power struggle between Xi and the 8 Immortal Families of the CCP has been brutal, thousands of command-level officers have been purged, gutting the PLA of mid- to senior level leadership. The purges equate to some 15% of the PLA's command leadership.

Xi has effectively decapitated an entire tier of field leadership. This has forced hurried promotions, training pauses and procurement delays. The purge strengthens Party control but erodes combat efficiency in the near term and feeds a culture of fear that undercuts the very professionalism Xi says he wants and breaks the fledgling multi-domain ops command he was trying to assemble.

This is similar to what Stalin did (20% officer purge) on the eve of Operation Barbarossa -- and we know how well that worked out!

Bunk +1

SBm +1