Putin/Xi Jinping Summit: The Bell Tolls

… by reason of its existence

A phenomenon:  our fraternals frequently speak about China without a clue and this is a growing phenomenon.  It is among us, not a formal anti-China process at all, but growing.  Refer to the slight debunk of the article from Rostislav Ishchenko.    In essence, they spread the western narrative shamelessly and it is astonishing, but they do not know it.  I find it in writings and commentary where I truly did not expect it.   The sore point here is the Chinese Peace Proposal.  Suddenly many of the pro-Russian commentators, not truly anti-China but tending to throw the words – and China, – into their writing and rhetoric, because they cannot do otherwise, are changing into China critics, just a little bit, just a little fraying of the action.  The China / Russia relationship speaks for itself.  When I saw the scope of this fraying of the narrative of the Russia-China partnership in the Russian sphere I took action and sent a request for help to some Russian analyst friends as well as to the China Writer’s group where Geoff Brown kindly allows me to sit in.  Shortly stated, I got to talk to some serious Russians and some serious Sinologists.

I was shocked at this initial polarization and hostility, at a time in our world where unity is of the utmost importance.  This does not mean an acceptance of everything and anything, but it does mean that we have to stand together.  A little solidarity no?

Let me copy my question rephrased as there was some rephrasing needed.  One of the China writers knew immediately what I was talking about, but in general, others needed to get their heads around it first:

The issue is somewhat nuanced.  From the Pro-Russian grouping, we get anti-China comments.  But it is not normal anti-China propaganda.  It is tied up with the Chinese peace construct and peaceful stance. 

So from the Pro-Russian groupings, one idea is that the only reason that China has proposed a peace format for negotiations, is that China wants to maintain their business and wants trade to continue. 

Another idea is that the reason that China proposed a peace format, is that China wants to free Russia’s hands in Ukraine, and come and help China fight its own fight, with NATO, etc.

Another comment that comes through, is that the Russia / China agreement (I don’t know which one) is loaded in favor of China.

These are projections, but I do not feel I have a good enough answer because it is not normal propaganda.  It is instead a slow whittling away of anything good out of China as if they want to be Pro-Russian at the expense of China but they clearly cannot be too anti-China, so, this is hidden under comments that China is not a warfighter and does not have blood in the game, therefore, they are kinda worthless and will put a knife into Russia’s back.   

This stance is rooted in the fact that some people are still completely without knowledge of how multipolarism works, but it is also very emotional and from that perspective I truly understand.  They want the next phase in our world to have Russia as the biggest winner, and absolutely not China – as if it is a race and must be polarized. 

I am not intending to change anyone’s mind.  At this emotional level, one cannot change minds with facts.  What I am in need of, is a good response for myself as this segment is getting louder with XJP’s visit to Russia.   

Some of the responses that I received are very direct.  From the Russian side, short and sweet:

Ah. No, has China ever done that? They know their history, those Russian commentators ought to know that particular narrative is fed by Western operatives.

From the China side a most wonderful but truly scary explanation, as to how China operates:

It takes a long time and a lot of reading as well as personal experience to understand China. And just to scratch the surface. The following is my contribution that may help people learn something about China.

1. The last dynasty of China known as Qing which ended on the first day of 1912 was not Chinese per se. China was conquered by a foreign tribe from the north in 1644. China, in fact, was under foreign rule for 268 years. The rulers are called Manchurians, descendants of Jurchins from southern Siberia. The Russian empire at that time was still far away. China became big because it conquered its conquerors by cultural conquest. But China also adopted many Manchurian customs. Manchurians now belong to one of China’s fifty-six ethnic groups. Vladivostok, Russia’s pearl of the Pacific, was the traditional stomping ground of the Jurchins before they went south, known to most Chinese by its original name, Haishenwei. This is just to point out that China is not the expanding empire that our Russian friends worry about.

2. Russia and the West may have been terrorized by Asian hordes in the past. There were the Huns that ran roughshod over the Romans and the Goths. When the Mongols came, nothing could stop them, not even Russia. The Mongols also ruled China as the Yuan dynasty. Before the Mongols, there were actually the Khitans from the northeast which ruled China as the Liao dynasty. Many European countries, including Russia, erroneously called China Khitai, later anglicized to Cathay. After the Mongols came the Turks. China had, by then, maybe a thousand years of history with the Turks and proto-Turks. Anyone who knows Chinese history would know that for a large part of its history, the country was inhabited by foreign tribes and under foreign rule. But none of them could conquer the Chinese civilization and they eventually were conquered by cultural conquest. The foreigners became Chinese.

3. In the early 1920s, the Soviet Union funded, armed and trained the army of the Chinese Nationalists, not the Chinese Communists. After the massacre of the Communists by the same Nationalists on April 12, 1927, the Chinese Communists formed an army. But the Comintern running the CPC through a Western official was a disaster. The foreigner knew nothing about China or war. Eventually, the party started the Long March and, rather than electing their leader from someone who had studied at Moscow’s Sun Yat-sen university, the party elected Mao, who had never left China. A lot of people in the West don’t realize that the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek’s son and heir Chiang Ching-kuo actually went to school at Moscow Sun Yat-sen university and married a Russian girl. It’s complicated.

4. For a long time, people in the Soviet Union did not know who Mao was. Others thought he had died and posted an obituary. Stalin had very little confidence that the Chinese Communist could succeed. But to be fair, no one in the world thought the Chinese Communist could succeed, including many communists and some of the founders of the party. Of the original founders, only Mao and Dong Biwu were present at Tiananmen on October 1st, 1949. The complete collapse of Chiang’s great army started with the fall of Manchuria in October of 1948 and became inevitable with the surrender of Beijing on January 31st, 1949. It took less than four months. Everyone was surprised, including Stalin, who had signed a treaty with Chiang Kai-shek’s government in return for Chiang recognizing the independence of Outer Mongolia (for a lot of Chinese, it felt like someone had taken Crimea from Russia, but in life, you do not own anything you cannot defend). When the PLA entered Nanjing, the capital of the Nationalist, none of the foreign embassies went with Chiang’s government to Guangzhou, not even the American embassy, none except one. If you guessed the USSR, you’re correct.

5. All that, of course, is history. And after the fall of the USSR, China and Russia established strong bilateral relations. China learned many important lessons from the failure of the USSR and many from mistakes made by the CPC in earlier decades. The party formulated long term strategies that allowed China to develop into what it is today. At the beginning of the game, China had too huge a population to feed, not enough water and arable land, scant mineral resources, very backward in technology and an army lagging far behind the Western world in capabilities. It was also under embargo from the West for thirty years and estranged from the USSR from the early 60s to the early 70s. Russia, on the other hand, has more than enough land to grow food for ten times, maybe a hundred times, its population. Its vast land area is full of valuable resources. It will never lack water or fuel. It has its own space program. It has its own airplane manufacturing company. Its army and its weapons are world class. It was almost impossible for Russia’s economy to collapse in that situation but it did. It was more about systematic breakdown, corruption and malfeasance than lack of aid in American dollars, as Sachs and Krugman would theorize. Following American advice, Russia gave away the wealth of the nation to oligarchs in a spate of privatization. The meager USD they received in return went to the secret accounts of miscreants and vodka, culminating in the economic collapse and the World Bank bailout in 1998. Russia did get US dollars, just not for the right reasons. China, on the other hand, needed USD to buy the technologies necessary for building their infrastructure and growing their economy. They needed USD to buy oil to fuel their economy. They also needed USD to buy food to make sure everyone was fed. Yet China succeeded because it has a party with a laser focus on achieving its strategic aims.

6. China and Russia are the best complementary partners in the new world order that pits America and the West against the global south. Russia has everything that China does not have, abundant fuel, vast underground treasures, huge landmass for growing food and very advanced strategic weapons. China in return can make use of all of Russia’s natural resources to make everything the world needs. China’s technology has caught up and can now make modern cars, airplanes, advanced electronics and communications equipment for the world. China’s self-developed space program is world class, even surpassing that of Russia. China’s army and weapons are also advancing by leaps and bounds. China is now the world’s largest builder of infrastructure, ships, trains, high-speed rails, bridges, tunnels, dams, nuclear power plants, ports and everything else in between. If Russia needs anything, China can make it. China also has a long border with Russia. It is impossible for the West to stop trade between China and Russia. They can’t even stop trade between China and North Korea. America and the rest of their lap-dogs can sanction themselves to death. But the greatest weakness of the US hegemon is the USD. Without the Dollar Hegemon, America will no longer be able to afford its extravagant military budget. When the rest of the world no longer wants or needs USD, America will face problems that people like Yellen and Powell cannot solve. Knowing Judo, Putin will work hard with China and other partners to break the weakest joint. America has no defense. Everything we see and hear from America and its lap-dogs are but the death throes of a dying beast. Actually, the harder it struggles, the quicker it will fall. China has been repeating this term since 2019, “global change unseen in a century.” So they know what is coming. The Russo-Ukraine conflict is a part of the struggle. Think about it this way, there is no good scenario for NATO. Are they stronger than Nazi Germany who had 4 million soldiers at the Eastern front for Operation Barbarossa? The Soviet Red Army, most of which Russians, ended up killing almost three million German soldiers and destroying the German war machine while Churchill and FDR were still making a lot of unfulfilled promises about the second front. Russia will win this conflict. Putin and Xi will make sure of that.

7. A lot of people making comments don’t necessarily know about what’s going on in the world. They may think that China going to war alongside Russia is a good idea. It is not. We don’t want to destroy the world, we just want to destroy the US hegemon. When Americans go home, and they will go home (look at Vietnam and Afghanistan, among others), everything will be fine. As for those who fear China will become a hegemon, they do not know Chinese history. Only people who have conquered China, occupied China and ruled China need to fear. They will be conquered by cultural conquest and be assimilated. They will become Chinese. Resistance is futile.

So with these two comments and others in return to my question closed the case for me.  And I wanted to close the case before moving on to the Putin/Xi Jinping summit.  Those that want to question and even malign China’s motives in order to create more wiggle room for Russia do not understand either Russia, or China in depth.  There is no need for that in history or in the current relationship between the two.

Let’s move on to that tolling bell:

No man is an Island, intire of it selfe; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee – John Donne.

We move on to the early western reaction to the Putin / XJP summit:

Regarding the west, they have just completely unmasked themselves.  The previous iteration was that Zelensky must decide on peace talks.  And now, all over the western media, they are jumping around like fleas and pontificating that Xi Jinping cannot possibly make peace proposals and a ceasefire is impossible for the warmongering west.  The fear and hysteria are at the top level and the west stands unmasked, naked, and in a state of ludicrous and insane babbling of outright lies with their very last safe haven, Zelensky must decide, ripped out from underneath their feet, all by themselves.  Nothing is new here, except that they now have a clear understanding that this bell is tolling for them.

So it is that the Chinese peace format has done its work by reason of its existence, whether anyone ever looks at it again, or not.  It has maddened the west more than anything else could madden them and stoked their insanity to fever pitch.

The west is shaking in its boots.  John Kirby, on the inadmissibility of calls for peace at the meetings between Putin and Xi Jinping: “If this meeting leads to any call for a ceasefire, it will be unacceptable. Because it will only ratify Russia’s conquests.”  Watching this made me think of a nasty little white wiggling cutworm.   Putin does not speak to them, and neither does Xi Jinping.  Note the spectacle of democrats speaking on Fox news as they are so intent on recovering ground but only managing to dig their own cutworm infested hole deeper, to escape from the sure, deeply insistent and morbid tones of the tolling bell.