Why China Should Be Disappointed With Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine?

What share a commonality do China and Ukraine have? Let's start with the relevance of geopolitics: China and Ukraine are both strategically significant countries. With a projected population of 1,426,000,000 in 2023, China would have the greatest population and second-largest economy in the world, after the US. With a total area of over 232,900 square miles, Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe by land area. This implies that the second-largest country in Europe, Russia, which has an area of around 6,606,000 square miles, is roughly 28 times smaller than the second-largest country in Europe.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of China also connects China and Ukraine, making Ukraine a crucial transit nation for the BRI's land-based lines and connecting China with Europe. But recently, a fresh and extremely unsettling connection between the two nations has emerged: Putin's attack on Ukraine. In addition, it has been utterly devastating for China as well as for Ukraine.

Yet why? What manner? Let's investigate.

Having friends in influential positions pays well in today's society. Russia fortunately has very few of them, which is good news for the West and especially for Ukraine. China is one among the few, though. Due to their similar authoritarian political ideologies and $190 billion in annual trade, the two neighbouring countries are strategic allies.

The two nations have developed tighter bilateral connections over the past ten years; additionally, both see the United States as a hostile player determined to restrain their territorial and cultural ambitions. They appear to have similar geopolitical interests. But things are not always as they seem. The invasion of Ukraine by Putin has completely altered the relationship between these two Eurasian giants and the Western democracies, who were once aspirational partners and eager to integrate them into their own economic, cultural, and political realms. Russia's once-proud military has fallen from grace in many circles, which has negatively affected China, whose own extraterritorial aspirations towards its neighbours are widely known around the world.

Both are viewed as threats by the majority of the world's peaceful nations, though not on an equal footing. Perhaps the greatest way to put it was by one American official: "Russia [is] a hurricane. It hits hard and quickly. On the other hand, "China is climate change: long, slow, and pervasive."

Even though Putin is the subject of the most recent International Criminal Court arrest warrants, China nonetheless maintains tight ties with him. It looks awful. However, the PRC isn't yet ready to toss the Kremlin out with the baby. We'll talk about why they might want to rethink their choice today, as well as how Russia's actions in Ukraine may affect China's strategic thinking going forward.

The world has been made aware of the injustice of Putin's war. We all know that China has territorial claims on Taiwan, a neighbouring independent island. As a result, China's goals are compared to Putin's intentions towards Ukraine by the US, Taiwan, and the vast majority of civilised nations. The United States and its allies have been keeping a closer eye on China ever since Russian forces barged across the border in February 2022; if the Ukrainian invasion went as well as many anticipated, it was reasonable to assume China might feel empowered to attack Taiwan, especially since Europe and the U.S. were preoccupied with Russia. After more than a year, it is safe to state that, given what we now know about the difficulties of contemporary joint and combined arms warfare, Xi would have to be incredibly dumb to approve an unprovoked amphibious assault of Taiwan.

Only one ruler has so far been stupid enough to act in that way. And see the results. The PRC is watching as Russia pours unfathomable sums of blood and treasure into an attrition war that is all but impossible to win. The leadership of China sees its future intentions of easily annexing Taiwan eroding in the wake of the devastation of Bakhmut, the horrors of Bucha, and the growing unhappiness among babushkas everywhere.

War is a tough instructor. For the time being, China might be satisfied to observe and absorb all it can...while it can. Why, then, has Putin's invasion turned China's future ambitions into a catastrophe? Let's start now. In almost every case, the lessons learned in Ukraine are negative for China. China has so far taken a distinctive, long-term, "over the horizon" strategic stance in its relationship with Taiwan. Although its main strategy has not been as overt as you might anticipate from a developing superpower used to exerting its influence economically and culturally, China has militarily adopted a method known as "grey zone operations" to further its strategic objectives. Operation in a grey zone is exactly what it sounds like: varying degrees of action.

They frequently take on a number of shapes and are frequently used by strong people determined to accomplish goals that would otherwise be illegal or too impossible to complete all at once. These can include proxy wars and the funding of destabilising insurgencies, cyberattacks or covert espionage, political propaganda and disinformation campaigns, election rigging, economic warfare and sanctions, or the slow deterioration of alliances and partnerships. One of China's favoured strategies is to gradually increase the number of times it enters Taiwan's Air Defence Identification Zone, the island's internationally recognised airspace, until it almost seems normal. Additionally, in order to intimidate and pressure their neighbour, China has recently sent an increasing number of vessels up to and even over the Taiwan Strait Median Line. It has also sent personnel and supplies to smaller island chains, both natural and man-made, in the South China Sea. Additionally, China harasses foreign ships passing through these waters, as seen most recently when a Chinese naval vessel fired at a Philippine coast Guard patrol just 105 miles off its own coast.

The world forgets about grey zone operations in our nonstop news cycle because they occur independently of one another, at separate hours and different days. It's fairly clever. If China took action all at once, the world would characterise it much more aggressively and unreliablely than it currently is. When taken as a whole, these actions normalise Chinese power projections, weaken Taiwan's defensive fortitude, train the west to accept greater degrees of belligerence, and position China to achieve its ultimate goal.

Anyone paying carefully will see that this kind of behaviour has been observed in the past. In order to destabilise the local administration and pave the way for Russia's annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin employed grey zone tactics prior to and during Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. He sent mercenaries and Russian forces in anonymous green uniforms with no markings to execute his bidding. The "little green men" in question, according to Putin, are unknown to him. They were able to achieve Putin's geopolitical goal without publicly escalating the problem into an unwinnable war...that didn't last long—by posing as local, pro-Russian separatists and claiming plausible deniability for their involvement.

Even while the Kremlin relied heavily on grey zone operations, it ultimately was unable to achieve its goals without a larger, carefully planned invasion. China will have taken note of this, no doubt. Prior to 2022, the West could only respond to what appeared to be a limited invasion with penalties that were also restricted in scope. When China engages in similar behaviour in the South China Sea, it can—and does—expect the same response. The United States, as yet, hasn’t been able to do much to challenge China’s construction of artificial islands or its repeated violation of Taiwanese airspace since it is short of a pronounced, conventional invasion. China is not perceived as openly aggressing if it only uses limited means to harass and weaken Taiwan.

Although China has long withstood this kind of response, the West may exert pressure on it through economic, political, and diplomatic channels. China has gained insight into the West's response thanks to Russia's shift from grey zone tactics to full-fledged warfare, and it presumably doesn't like what it has seen. With billions of dollars worth of armaments and aid, the entire globe supported Ukraine in the conflict. Stronger alliances were formed, and it made a more steadfast commitment to indirectly defending weaker states.

Now that Taiwan is a possibility, China is aware of what to anticipate. If they had invasion plans, they have presumably put them on hold for the time being. Correctly so. Another justification for Putin's war's success in deterring China in the east while simultaneously benefiting the West. From Russia's invasion, we can learn further things. China has discovered, for example, that size isn't everything.On paper, China's military is very strong. It has one million more active military than the United States, or two million total. It recently launched its third aircraft carrier, which is a respectable figure when compared to anyone other than the US, and now has the largest fleet in the world based only on raw numbers. Only the United States has a larger defence budget than it. It possesses some of the best air-to-air, hypersonic, and attack drones in the world. China has learnt from Ukraine that having greater resources and numbers doesn't guarantee victory; Russia once possessed comparable statistics, after all. It will require a lot more if it intends to conquer Taiwan.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, its territorial goals were far more realistic than China's plans for Taiwan. It was simple to believe, as most did, that Kiev would rapidly submit because to the large number of tanks and mechanised soldiers that had amassed on the Ukrainian border. The two nations are close to one another, and Russia has great rail access. Only a few significant streams serve as Ukraine's only natural defences. Even Belarus, a close neighbour, served as the base of Russia's onslaught. If China decides to pursue a similar invasion strategy in Taiwan, it will face logistical challenges on a par with Mount Everest. Amphibious operations are among the trickiest to execute because they combine the logistics of moving people, equipment, and vehicles across open water to contested borders with the complexities of air, land, and sea warfare.

Prior doing anything else, China must transit the 100-mile-wide Strait of Taiwan, where it will be exposed to artillery and anti-ship missile volleys. Modern anti-ship missiles can in reality have a significantly disproportionate impact on the war, if the fate of the Moskva, the Russian Black Sea fleet's flagship, is any indicator. In order to establish and maintain massive stockpiles of supplies transported over in secure convoys once it reaches the island of Taiwan, assuming it can actually establish a beachhead, it will need to defend itself from what will undoubtedly be an onslaught of Taiwanese artillery and withstand any counterattacks that come. It may not be enough to simply have better numbers. For this one basic reason—you cannot frighten your way to success in war, especially when the enemy you fight holds the moral high ground—the outcome of Russia's invasion is bad news for China. There will be a strong and noticeable backlash.

Simply because China outnumbers Taiwan, it will not give up. additional than the importance of training in the result of military battles, China has taken additional lessons from Ukraine. Armies will always struggle to make up for training shortfalls, just as having an advantage in materials won't guarantee victory. Unquestionably, Russian troops—whether mercenary, conscript, or otherwise—are significantly less well-trained than their Ukrainian counterparts.

The majority of Russia's most skilled and seasoned soldiers, officers, and non-commissioned officers are now deceased. Putin's repeated mobilisation efforts have also blatantly exposed the flaws in Russian military instruction, including an alarming lack of weapons, vehicles, and live ammunition for training, inappropriate training grounds, subpar command, a persistent lack of technological enablers, and lack of concern for the well-being of the general populace and the development of cohesive collective units.

However, Ukraine has adopted a wide range of foreign munitions, weaponry, drones, and technology while discarding outdated Soviet strategies in favour of more potent Western ones. And it, combined with the daily intelligence they receive, has contributed to a number of stunning successes. Although technology is frequently cited as the reason for Ukraine's prosperity, it is unquestionably not a panacea.

At least in Ukraine, maintaining Western weaponry is challenging since they are prone to breakdown and challenging to replace when supplies are low. We frequently overlook the human factor in this debate when discussing how challenging it is to deploy and operate modern weapons efficiently. Ukrainian soldiers are putting to the test, among other things, real-time internet networking and information systems, drone jamming weapons, and maritime remote-controlled kamikaze boats—Western equipment that require genuine skill and knowledge to use in a combined arms environment. They are getting better at gathering surveillance and intelligence. They are becoming specialists in sustainment logistics, collaborative operations, and psychological warfare. To put it mildly, it has been a whirlwind crash course. But they didn't work on their own.

Ukrainian officers were being trained in the West, particularly in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and other European countries, as early as 2014. Through the State Partnership Programme of the United States National Guard, the Ukrainian armed forces began receiving training in the US as early as 1993. Ukrainian soldiers were taught how to issue orders akin to missions, be given the authority to make quick decisions on the battlefield, and use realistic combat drills to hone their combat skills and build their wartime fortitude.

As part of the U.S. Army Europe's Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, a mixed task force of Americans, Poles, Lithuanians, Brits, Canadians, and other soldiers established in 2015 to mentor and advise Ukrainian battalions in the art of combined arms warfare, tens of thousands of Ukrainian officers have recently received crash courses in contemporary joint warfighting in Britain, Germany, Poland, and elsewhere.Possibly more than the actual guns and ammunition, these "train-the-trainer" programmes are giving Ukraine a definite tactical advantage.

The bad news for China is that Taiwan has been integrating weapons systems made in the West for much longer than that, and they joined a programme comparable to the one led by the US in 2022. Every day that passes will see their military learning from the strongest troops in the world, making an invasion all the more challenging.

Speaking of lessons, China now understands that even if the United States, its allies, and partners do not expressly commit hard military power to fight side-by-side with Taiwanese forces in the event of an invasion, it can be certain that the likelihood the Western world will help Taiwan in some way is extremely high. This is in contrast to Russia, which was known to have underestimated the extent to which Ukraine would receive western assistance after it was invaded.

Geographic separation from a global hotspot no longer restricts the extent of foreign help or the intensity of intervention in the same way that it formerly did. Taiwan would still send vital military and humanitarian supplies if China invaded, despite the enormous Pacific Ocean that separates it from the United States.

Xi Jinping will shudder as he sees the enormous quantities of money NATO member nations have donated to Ukraine. Russia has helped the west become more aware of the real danger posed by dictatorship. The days of neutrality or ambivalence on maintaining territorial integrity are long gone.

China's hopes that the United States would avoid getting involved in a Taiwanese conflict have long since evaporated. We anticipate that the United States will provide Taiwan with the same, if not greater, assistance given that it has demonstrated a willingness to send modern tanks, cutting-edge weapons, and advisors to aid Ukraine, which is currently confronting its second most serious national security threat. This brings up yet another reason why China should heed the lessons of Russia's experience: It must acknowledge that the West has also been studying what works-and what doesn't-when countries threaten to invade their neighbour, just as it has gleaned wisdom from the West's response to Russia's invasion. The initial reaction to Russia's intention to concentrate soldiers on Ukraine's borders may have given China some encouragement. Since it was still hypothetical, the West could only make vague threats to respond to Russian aggression in proportion. Although serious, the prospect and implementation of economic penalties was not insurmountable.

Russia had planned to end the conflict swiftly and absorb the massive resources and personnel of Ukraine, protecting itself from the harshest sanctions-related impacts. In the short term, they might make typical Russians uneasy. However, it was impossible to ignore the long-term strategic advantages of a swift, crushing triumph. It's reasonable to suggest that Russia could be able to gradually diminish the impact of sanctions once the conflict in Ukraine was finished and it was under its control, just as it had done after it invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. China anticipates a similar result for its own invasion in an ideal scenario. However, Russian setbacks have demonstrated that the West will move from simple sanctions to deterrence through denial, deploying rapid response troops to the region as a preventive measure to stop things from escalating further. Once the war spirals out of control and the aggressor finds itself on the losing side.

It is possible that the West will simply double down on arming Taiwan with the weapons and training it needs in advance, as well as redoubling its own presence, given that the threat of sanctions was insufficient to deter Russia from invading and that when they were implemented they did not alter Russia's behaviour to the extent many hoped. Japan, Australia, and other countries in the Indo-Pacific have already been carrying out this activity for several months.

China will definitely prefer to cope with sanctions than the latter, you can be sure of that. Another lesson is that although while sanctions are slow to take effect, they eventually do; this lesson is actually a corollary to the assumption that the West will move beyond the threat of sanctions.

Russia and China are in very distinct economic weight classes. According to Nazak Nikakhtar, a former senior U.S. Commerce Department official, U.S. and European officials are well aware that "The potential implications of sanctions on China is a far more complex exercise than sanctions on Russia, given U.S. and allies' extensive entanglement with the Chinese economy." China has the second-largest economy in the world and a significant global supply chain. They would suffer, but so would the West, which depends on China for a wide range of products, including computers, surfboards, cell phones, and shoes. However, if the West is successful in focusing on particular sectors of China's economy, such as its reliance on foreign-produced microchips and telecommunications equipment, it may be unable to conduct a long-term military operation. Russia is experiencing this, as it is struggling to obtain the specialised components and materials required to sustain its ageing stockpile of tanks, missiles, and other weapons.

Western sanctions took over a year to start producing results, but they are now. It has compelled the Russian government to seek solace from Iran, North Korea, and even China. Chinese policymakers undoubtedly ponder whether occupying Taiwan would be worthwhile given the severe economic repercussions if it were abruptly cut off from Western resources and goods or unable to sell its own goods in foreign markets, the foundation upon which it has grown into a regional superpower. Sanctions will probably remain in place for years if there is an invasion. China currently has ample evidence that the West would be ready to maintain these for the long term, even if it had a negative impact on their own economies. The invasion of Ukraine served as a warning to the United States and the other NATO members.

Thirty years ago, there was a sense of security that the menace of authoritarianism and traditional peer hostility had passed into history. The West was misled into thinking that it could scale back its commitments to international security and concentrate on its own interests. There were important, high-level conversations about the United States' forward presence in Europe and how far it should go to ensure European security in the years before the war in Ukraine. The military there is the strongest on the planet. As NATO's skeleton, it is essential.

The United States could undoubtedly defeat any other nation in an equal combat if it had to fight alone. But Putin's invasion served as a reminder to American politicians of the value of international security cooperation. It brought to light the dangers of creating boundaries in the sand without being prepared to stand by them.

The United States and its allies have now made it more obvious how actively they intend to support their allies and partners. Unfortunately for China, one such area is Taiwan. It also owes Putin gratitude for the United States' decision to reiterate its political, economic, and military support for the island.

It's reasonable to think that the United States may have slid into ambivalence if Putin hadn't invaded; as the costs of projecting preventative strength into the Pacific grew with each presidential term, there would be discussion about whether it was all worthwhile. Who knows, over time, the U.S. may have genuinely reduced the size of its military and closed down its overseas outposts, allowing China to fully implement its grey zone operations.

There is now little prospect that China will get away with this kind of behaviour without suffering significant consequences. The United States will monitor China more closely to make sure it doesn't try to gather an invading force. If it does, it should remember one last lesson from Russia: If an invasion fails, you can say goodbye to your might and influence.

Putin's military is no longer anywhere near as strong as he claimed, and practically everyone on the planet today, save from Russia itself, is aware of this. The best way to make everyone against you is to invade a neighbour who values independence and freedom. Invasion failures guarantee immortality.They are enduring symbols of contempt, discredit, and ignominy.

The narrative of benign freedom that Russia once claimed to be its main objective has long since slipped from its grasp. NATO has grown stronger and more unified. All of this came from a failed invasion. China would surely see its hard-won power and reputation erode away throughout East Asia and even beyond if it attempted its own invasion and failed. China continues to have strong ties with America's closest regional allies in the Indo-Pacific; yet, if China invaded and started a protracted conflict, it would see its regional influence decline in comparison to its adversaries. A nation need not be a great power in order for the globe to function. China has suffered greatly as a result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Its once-potent Eurasian alliance with its partner Russia is now seriously unbalanced.

A year ago, the world was a very different place as compared to today. China has learned that an invasion would be greeted with tenacious Taiwanese resistance and long-term Western support, just as the West has become more aware of authoritarian threats. On paper, strength does not equate to success.