China has a problem. And this problem does not mean the USA or NATO, Taiwan or Japan. It’s called Russia.
Ironically, Vladimir Putin, who signed a strategic partnership with Xi Jinping in February 2022, is responsible for one of the biggest propaganda defeats that China’s rulers have had to suffer in recent years. For twelve months, Russian soldiers have been murdering, raping and kidnapping in a country that is not theirs. And for the past 12 months, the word Ukraine has been mentioned in the same breath as Taiwan.
For China, this is a PR meltdown. Beijing is so keen to stifle the parallel that Foreign Minister Qin Gang delivered a speech on Tuesday calling for “certain countries” to stop warning about the “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow” scenario.
Emotionally, the clocks are back to 4:50 a.m., February 24, 2022
But the mental connection can no longer be severed. Because it applies. Two superpowers that base their territorial claims on history-bending imperial ideology threaten their neighboring countries. Russia has carried out the attack, but fortunately China has not yet. But Moscow’s and Beijing’s expansion projects are kindred spirits.
Many questions remain unanswered should the communist leadership in Beijing decide to invade Taiwan at some point: would the United States rush to military aid to the island republic? Would Japan intervene? How would Europe behave?
Only one thing is certain: around the world, the first reaction would be one of shocked recognition. China, she would say, is doing the same as Russia and is launching a brutal, unjustifiable war against a sovereign democracy. Emotionally, the clocks are back to 4:50 a.m., February 24, 2022.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a war of the utmost moral clarity, a campaign of conquest that flagrantly violates the fundamental principles of the UN Charter. If China were to attack Taiwan, one would immediately think of the rockets on Kiev, the siege of Mariupol, and the Bucha massacre.
Beijing caught this unholy association for itself. First, by increasingly threatening Taiwan with fighter jet maneuvers and repeatedly stressing that an armed conquest cannot be ruled out. Second, and perhaps more importantly, by choosing not to distance itself from Russia’s war of extermination (Chinese: “Ukraine crisis”).
At the Munich Security Conference, when asked whether he could rule out an impending escalation against Taiwan, Beijing’s top foreign policy officer, Wang Yi, replied: “Taiwan has never been a country and will never be one.” He could have calmed down and didn’t. Instead: next stop Moscow. There, on Wednesday, Wang had his picture taken with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, laughing like a friend, and then met Vladimir Putin.
China and Russia, two have found each other – that’s one impression. The other: Taiwan and Ukraine are a community of solidarity. The East Asian island nation has been supporting Kiev with humanitarian and financial aid since the first days of the invasion. As of late 2022, a Taiwanese soldier was killedwho had joined the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, was well received in both countries.
The narrative of Chinese propaganda has always been: Taiwan is an internal affair of the People’s Republic of China. After this year one can state that at least this lie has lost its power of persuasion. Taiwan, which is de jure the Republic of China founded in 1912, was never governed by the People’s Republic of China, which was proclaimed in 1949.
This historical dimension has always been an argument against Beijing. But the systemic struggle between democracy and dictatorship is always about psychology. Hearts and minds that is in geopolitical terms. And those hearts and minds have been turning more and more away from China since Russia’s Ukraine campaign.
Ukraine is the precedent that China has always wanted to avoid
In the Global South, the support of the People’s Republic is partly unchanged. To their great annoyance, however, the West is showing unexpected solidarity with Ukraine. The fact that this has also been reflected in support for Taiwan since February 2022 is a disaster for China. It’s the precedent Beijing has always wanted to avoid.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last year with regard to Taiwan that threatened countries must be helped before the aggression, not only afterwards. “We must not leave them in the hands of another country that is financially, territorially and materially stronger,” said the President of Ukraine.
Clear words even came from Germany, which is otherwise more considerate of China. Speaking to the UN General Assembly in August, just before Beijing launched large-scale shooting maneuvers around Taiwan, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said: “We do not accept international law being broken and a larger neighbor attacking its smaller neighbor in violation of international law – and of course that also applies to China. “
Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis wrote a little later in a guest article “Telegraph”: “The free world must not allow Taiwan to become a second Ukraine.” Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who recently visited the island nation, published an article in the in January “Financial Times” with the headline: “Taiwan must not suffer the fate of Ukraine.” Vice President of the European Parliament Nicola Beer said in the Tagesspiegel: “We let Putin surprise us. That must not and will not happen to us in Taiwan.”
Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow—that’s the warning China doesn’t want to be heeded. There is every reason to say them all the louder.
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