Growing Danger of War in Asia: To Arms

The Chinese defense minister’s meeting with Putin is a fatal signal for the West. Many major Asian powers are arming themselves militarily. This increases the risk of world war.

This is a fatal signal for the West. China is largely pursuing its own interests in the Ukraine conflict, and these go well beyond Putin’s war. Beijing is still not delivering any weapons to Russia, but Western governments should have no illusions: Xi doesn’t want Putin to lose.

The Chinese regime has various reasons for this. For one thing, Xi needs Russia as an ally in the geopolitical conflict with the US. On the other hand, Beijing is concerned with controlling the region. The Asian continent is becoming more and more the center of the world and control of the trade routes is existential for all great powers. That’s why not only China is massively arming itself militarily, but also countries like Japan and India. The danger of war in Asia is growing.

More than half of the world’s population lives on the Asian continent. While the population figures are stagnating or declining in many European countries, more than 1.4 billion people now live in India and China, and over 270 million in Indonesia. The example of China shows that the workbenches of the world are in Asia and the populous countries of the continent have great economic potential.

But with the importance of the economic area, the efforts of many powers to bring the region under military control are also increasing. For China, the movement of goods via the sea routes is existential and a theoretical blockade would lead to the economic collapse of the aspiring superpower because the country is also dependent on raw material imports. That is why Beijing is making more and more territorial claims – at the expense of its neighboring countries in the region.

The border disputes and China’s build-up to become a major military power mean that other countries feel threatened and, as a result, are upgrading their military. An overview:

“Outside attempts to suppress and contain China are escalating,” outgoing Premier Li Keqiang said at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in early March. The Chinese leadership wanted to legitimize the rising defense spending, which increased by 7.2 percent compared to the previous year. Beijing is making 1.55 trillion yuan (210 billion euros) available for the defense budget this year.

China’s ruler Xi also said at the People’s Congress that he was preparing for war. In doing so, he wove the issue of preparedness for war into four separate speeches, in one instance urging his generals to “dare the fight.”