alt Hacker NewsCurious if this will eventually change China's calculus with regards to Russia. If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.
It already seems like Russia is positioned to be completely subservient to China in the future.
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If Europe were a big customer for Russia energy, it seems like Russia would have an incentive to not antagonize it.
Oh, see how well it went.
> If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.
China wants Russia to at least keep the Ukraine war going, if not eventually win the darn thing. Russia winning (or getting away with an armistice that lets them keep Crimea and Donbas) means a precedence China has for a land-grab of its own - obviously Taiwan, but other countries in its "sphere of influence" have seen hostilities for years, from land grabs [1] to overfishing [2], not to mention the border dispute with India.
And as long as we are distracted with Israel/Palestine or Ukraine/Russia, China has free rein to do whatever they want.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...
[2] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/chinas-overfi...
China is happy as a clam that Russia is self-isolating and destroying their internal economy. The natural resources of Russia are vast and if China is the only one exploiting them and funneling them into the Chinese economy it'd be an excellent outcome. I don't think China is opposed to strong economies as trade partners but dependent economies are much easier to control and monopolize.